{"id":30,"date":"2008-07-16T16:05:56","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T16:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=30"},"modified":"2008-07-16T16:05:56","modified_gmt":"2008-07-16T16:05:56","slug":"critical_mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2008\/07\/critical_mass\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Mass"},"content":{"rendered":"

ArtsJournal’s own Douglas McLennan on the past and future of, well, arts journalism, as told to Crosscut Seattle<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Where are we now in arts journalism? Newspapers have been dropping critics right and left.<\/b><\/p>\n

Newspapers
\nhave not been the newspapers that I remember for quite a number of
\nyears now. The day of many competing papers and views in a city is
\ngone. But the classic newspaper model was not built on a mass-media
\nvehicle. It was a collection niches. People don’t buy a newspaper
\nbecause of its coverage of city hall. They buy it for the comics
\nsection or the crossword puzzle, etc. After they get through their
\nfavorite thing, they will read the city hall coverage. But the genius
\nof this model is that none of the niche contents can support
\nthemselves, but if you aggregated them altogether, then you have enough
\nreaders and enough revenue to sell to advertisers.<\/p>\n

In
\nthe ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, the newspapers increasingly looked to TV as
\nthe mass media model. The mass market mentality is not niches at all.
\nIt is not excellence of product as the key to success. The mass market
\nstrategy is to find the place in the middle so that what you produce
\nappeals to the most people. Editors I worked with at newspapers told me
\nto write at an eighth grade reading level — the mythical, average,
\nmass-market consumer. As soon as you do that, and when you assume that
\nevery person ought to be able to read every story in a newspaper, then
\nyou are not talking to those who are interested in the niches. Then the
\nclassical music reviews in a given city are not intended for people who
\nknow a lot about classical music. They are pitched to those who don’t
\nknow much. So you end up getting this content that isn’t very good. It
\nisn’t very satisfying to the audience that ought to be your core
\naudience, and you get this erosion of leadership of arts coverage.
\nThere are lots of exceptions. I try to post them every day in
\nArtsjournal. But the majority of arts coverage is not very good.<\/p>\n

Also,
\nnewspapers have never been able to cover community arts in an
\ninteresting way. Things like dance or jazz get really minimal coverage.
\nHowever, now with the ease and the different ways that you can deliver
\ninformation, we may discover a new model and improve the way that we
\ncover culture. Right now we are in between the two models. The old one
\nno longer works and the new one hasn’t been established.<\/p>\n

Here’s
\nan example of what I’m talking about. I just spent a week in North
\nCarolina with dance critics from around the nation. Like music, dance
\nis hard to write about. You are trying to describe things that are not
\neasy to describe. What would happen if we tried to describe an event in
\na new way? I broke them into three teams, and signed them up with
\nblogger accounts, and gave them a Flip video camera, which has a
\nconvenient USB port with which to upload movies to You Tube. I asked
\nthem to use the video to compare dance styles, or show what you mean,
\nor talk to critics, the audience, or the choreographer. So they had a
\nday and a half to expand the palette on which they are working, to find
\nsomething that is not so linear in form with which to describe this
\nartistic experience.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I (heart) the Flip video camera<\/a>, by the way. $149.99 of instant viral marketing potential. I love the idea of orchestras\/presenters interviewing audiences before, during (intermission) and after concerts, and immediately posting reaction clips on their sites and YouTube. Also, if they agree to it, video-interviewing artists just as they’re about to go on stage and just as they’re coming off stage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ArtsJournal’s own Douglas McLennan on the past and future of, well, arts journalism, as told to Crosscut Seattle: Where are we now in arts journalism? Newspapers have been dropping critics right and left. Newspapers have not been the newspapers that I remember for quite a number of years now. The day of many competing papers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}