Over the past three years I have talked a couple hundred people into blogging. While I’ve never considered ArtsJournal itself a blog, it does satisfy one reason to blog – pointing readers towards interesting things elsewhere on the web, and I think of the skein of these stories as a curated conversation about culture and ideas.
\nThere’s been an explosion in the number of blogs about culture in the past two years; now it seems like there’s a blog about almost anything you could imagine. So why add to it with another one? I’ll let you know when I have a better answer, but for now, I’d say that in my daily assembling of ArtsJournal, I see lots of connections between stories that I find interesting. Sometimes I’d like to make those connections more explicit than the fact that I’ve chosen them for AJ.
\nThis week is ArtsJournal’s seventh birthday; by my rough calculation, we’ve posted links to just over 49,000 stories in that time. Considering we post about one story for every 35 we look at, that’s an awful lot of reading and trying to make connections.
\nWe’re living at a time when we have more access to more culture than ever before. This means a dizzying number of choices not only for consumers but also for artists and producers. It also may mean that the ways we make, distribute and use culture may have to be rethought. Business models that have been successful in supporting the production of movies, music, TV, books, and theatre may have to be reinvented. As they are, our relationships with culture will change.
\nThis makes for uncertain times if you’re a producer of “content”. But it also makes it a fascinating time to be an observer of culture. It is in these periods of big change that cultural journalism is at its most interesting; it is also periods like these that critics have traditionally had their biggest influence. Yet this time arts journalism itself is undergoing many of the same wrenching changes as the larger culture.
\nA lot has been written about the future of critics in an age when anyone can publish and millions of citizen bloggers find voice. Does this mean the end of traditional critics? No. But the institutions that have supported traditional critics are changing, and, just like the rest of the culture, critics are going to have to reinvent their business models. We have traditionally depended on critics to define their territory, walk the perimeter and report back about what’s new, what’s interesting and how they connect. As the amount of culture we have access to becomes ever more overwhelming we’re going to need people to help us make sense of it. There are some awfully smart people out there trying to do exactly that. One thing I hope to do with this blog is to point you in the direction of some of them, Proust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the past three years I have talked a couple hundred people into blogging. While I’ve never considered ArtsJournal itself a blog, it does satisfy one reason to blog – pointing readers towards interesting things elsewhere on the web, and I think of the skein of these stories as a curated conversation about culture and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/03\/dog_days_a_new_artsjournal_blo.html","url_meta":{"origin":15,"position":0},"title":"Dog Days, A new ArtsJournal Blog","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"March 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Today we're happy to launch Dalouge Smith's new blog on arts advocacy. It's called Dog Days. Dalouge runs the San Diego Youth Symphony, and we met last summer in Chicago while I was writing a story on new thinking in how to run orchestras. Why a blog on arts advocacy?\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/01\/a_new_artsjournal_blog.html","url_meta":{"origin":15,"position":1},"title":"A New ArtsJournal Blog","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"January 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm happy to introduce a new ArtsJournal blog. It's called CultureGulf: Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina, and it's written by Cynthia Joyce, a resident of New Orleans. I've been looking to get a blog going on AJ about the Gulf ever since hurricane Katrina hit a year-and-a-half ago. It's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":820,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/03\/the-five-most-interesting-stories-we-collected-on-artsjournal-this-week-03-20-16.html","url_meta":{"origin":15,"position":2},"title":"The Five Most-Interesting Stories We Collected On ArtsJournal This Week 03.20.16","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"March 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My picks for the five most interesting stories we gathered this week. The Arts' Existential Challenge Arts organizations, along with every business sector trying to cope with sweeping changes wrought by the internet, are struggling with how to reinvent for the future while not alienating its past or present. \"What's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weekly AJ Top Stories"","block_context":{"text":"Weekly AJ Top Stories","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/weekly-aj-top-stories"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/17COTTER1-articleLarge.jpg?fit=600%2C374&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/17COTTER1-articleLarge.jpg?fit=600%2C374&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/17COTTER1-articleLarge.jpg?fit=600%2C374&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":665,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/01\/top-stories-this-week-from-artsjournal.html","url_meta":{"origin":15,"position":3},"title":"Last Week’s Top Stories on ArtsJournal","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"January 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"We're aggregating upwards of 150 stories a week on ArtsJournal these days. Despite the decimation of the daily newspaper arts journalism profession, there are more good stories about the arts now than there have ever been. But that also means it's more difficult to sort through. We look through more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weekly AJ Top Stories"","block_context":{"text":"Weekly AJ Top Stories","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/weekly-aj-top-stories"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/kutimangoes_wide-03ccff7c074c92d2fa4667bf529dbe01ec4b294d-s1600-c85.jpg?fit=1200%2C674&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/kutimangoes_wide-03ccff7c074c92d2fa4667bf529dbe01ec4b294d-s1600-c85.jpg?fit=1200%2C674&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/kutimangoes_wide-03ccff7c074c92d2fa4667bf529dbe01ec4b294d-s1600-c85.jpg?fit=1200%2C674&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/kutimangoes_wide-03ccff7c074c92d2fa4667bf529dbe01ec4b294d-s1600-c85.jpg?fit=1200%2C674&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/kutimangoes_wide-03ccff7c074c92d2fa4667bf529dbe01ec4b294d-s1600-c85.jpg?fit=1200%2C674&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":342,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2006\/12\/artsjournals_new_look-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":15,"position":4},"title":"ArtsJournal's New Look","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"December 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Actually it's more than just a new look. The entire website has been rebuilt from the ground up. Why change something that's simple and easy to use and has worked well for the past four years? Content management systems have advanced considerably since we last rebuilt ArtsJournal, and the new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/11\/time_to_start_blogging.html","url_meta":{"origin":15,"position":5},"title":"Time to Start Blogging","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"November 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've decided to make this blog active and use it to write about some of the issues I care about. I've been using it as a kind of administrative tool for things which don't easily fit on other parts of ArtsJournal, but there are ideas I'd like to explore through\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}