The Director

Douglas McLennan (mclennan@najp.org) is an arts journalist and critic and the founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com, the leading aggregator of arts journalism on the internet. Each day ArtsJournal combs through more than 200 publications worldwide and posts links to the best cultural stories. The Boston Globe calls ArtsJournal a "must read" for anyone with an interest in the arts. The New York Times writes that "ArtsJournal.com has added something important to the cultural discourse." Prior to starting ArtsJournal, Mr. McLennan was arts columnist and music critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

A former concert pianist, he has a Master's degree in music from the Juilliard School in New York. He has performed in Asia, Europe and North America and lived and worked in Italy and in China, where he spent a year as artist-in-residence at the Central Conservatory in Beijing.

He has written on the arts for numerous publications, including as music critic for Salon.com, and for Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and the London Evening Standard. He has been a music critic for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and is a contributor to the new edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians.

He is a recipient of several awards for arts criticism and reporting, including a National Arts Journalism Program Fellowship at Columbia University and a Deems Taylor/ASCAP Award for music journalism. He was recently named one of 100 Outstanding Graduates of the Juilliard School for the school's centennial.

He is a popular speaker on issues of digital culture, mass media and journalism, and lectures frequently on these subjects. A partial list: The Annenberg School of Communication at USC; The Getty; Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts Theatre Institute (at USC); the Mellon Orchestra Forum, the Chicago Art Institute; the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley; The National Press Club (Washington DC); American University; Columbia University, American Dance Federation Critics Institute; Opera America; the American Symphony Orchestra League; Dance/USA; Chamber Music America; the National Critics Conference (Los Angeles); the National Performing Arts Conference (Pittsburgh); Music Critics Association national conference; AP Managing Editors Conference (Dallas); Poynter Institute National Writers Workshop (Portland); Philadelphia Museum of Art; Getty Leadership Institute; NEA Classical Music Critics Institute (New York); Duke University.

Mr. McLennan also runs an annual critics institute at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado each summer. The program has attracted the top classical music critics in America, and is preceded by a weeklong online group discussion. He has also consulted on arts coverage with a number of news organizations and he conceived and wrote the business plan for the Seattle Channel's new innovative arts programming service - ArtsZone.

Board President
John Rockwell

NAJP : About Us : Staff