TikTok, that's how. With The Shadow Work Journal, Keila Shaheen has become "perhaps the first self-published nonfiction author to break out in a big way on the platform, a feat she accomplished by fully harnessing its potential not just for marketing, but for direct sales." - The New York Times
"Casting, casting, casting is the obvious answer," writes Charles McNulty, "though there’s a bit more to it than that." Friedman and star Jonathan Groff explain. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
Social platforms can have a radicalizing effect on fandoms. When we study algorithmic radicalization, we tend to do so in the context of politics, but the same systems might also calcify our beliefs about cultural products. Yet we still have a fairly limited understanding of how all of this works. - The Atlantic
After Super Size Me, in which he ate only at McDonald's for a month (and suffered for it), Spurlock was for a time as prominent a documentarian as Michael Moore, producing 70 films on subjects like consumer susceptibility to marketing (The Greatest Movie Ever Sold) and minimum wage labor (30 Days). - Variety
Principal percussionist Josh Jones was told over and over that his audition was the best people had ever heard, and he regularly got high praise from the music director. Two years later, he was told his organizational skills were lacking and denied tenure. Was this really about race? - The Washington Post (MSN)
Among the practices the department plans to challenge are exclusive ticketing contracts that Ticketmaster has with many of the venues where high-profile acts perform. - The Wall Street Journal
The accusations against the 52-year-old Frenchman — currently music director of the orchestra and opera in Cologne as well as founder/director of the widely-hailed period-instrument orchestra Les Siècles — were revealed by Le Canard enchaîné, a magazine famous for both satire and serious investigations. - Van
It's not just that the job is delicate; it has to be done quickly, because the site is undergoing a slow-motion landslide due to two winters of heavy rains. The ground under the chapel is now moving at the rate of roughly seven inches per week. - LAist
"Founded in 1973 as an avant-garde theater project committed to local actors, the Wilma has been renowned for its experimental, boundary-pushing work. ... It is the first theater in Pennsylvania to win the award, which ... includes a grant of $25,000." - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
"The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a Penguin Random House division, announced Monday the dismissals of Alfred A. Knopf publisher Reagan Arthur and Pantheon/Schocken publisher Lisa Lucas. A publishing official … said that the restructuring was for financial reasons." - AP
Artistic director David Hallberg and others are indignantly rebuking The Sydney Morning Herald, saying that "critique of dancers' bodies" is "not acceptable." The sentence in question: "The dancers are fabulous, although – and perhaps this was the lighting – (they) seem unusually thin this season." The assessment of the choreography, however, is blistering. - The Guardian
The Canadian-born soprano/conductor will begin, as of August 2026, a three-year term as chief conductor and artistic director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She remains principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden and takes the same position at Switzerland's Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne this summer. - Ludwig Van
“People wept in the street when the magnificent Mackintosh building was nearly destroyed by two fires. So why, 10 years on and despite overwhelming support for restoration, is there still no plan—or funding—for its repair" - The Observer (UK)
The auction house said that “the marquee sales that account for nearly half of its annual revenue would continue, despite the company having lost control of its official website last Thursday in a hack that is testing the loyalty of its ultrawealthy clients amid its spring auctions.” - The New York Times
“Rumours have been widespread … of the existence of a secret list of 10 men in the industry, including leading actors and directors, who have been abusive to women. The names, described as ‘explosive,’ are believed to have been sent anonymously to the National Centre for Cinema.” - The Observer (UK)
John McWhorter makes the case for Raisin — a 1973 adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun with book by her former husband, Robert Nemiroff (with Charlotte Zaltzberg), music by Judd Woldin and lyrics by Robert Brittan — and suggests a plausible explanation for why it was forgotten. - The New York Times
For years, the numbers of fully-employed faculty have fallen as universities use poorly-paid adjunct professors instead. Yet tuition prices keep soaring. Why? Because the number of paid administrators keeps soaring, too. Maybe students and faculty should be eliminated so universities can be run by and for their bureaucrats? - The Atlantic (MSN)
"This is a cautionary tale of performing-arts nonprofits, of board burnout, of soaring costs in a post-COVID world, of the precarious state of philanthropy. The primary cause of death was that people — donors, audiences, players and board members — appeared to have taken for granted an institution they loved." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
"Conductor Anthony Parnther and the Musicians at Play Foundation speedily formed a new training orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Los Angeles, and scheduled an inaugural concert for April 28, on the same weekend that AYS was supposed to play the final concert of its season." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
That’s “the Order of the Third Bird—supposedly a secret international fellowship, going back centuries, of artists, authors, booksellers, professors, and avant-gardists. Participants in the Order would converge, flash-mob style, at museums, stare intensely at a work of art for half an hour, and vanish.” - The New Yorker
