NAJP Summit Live

How will tools redefine arts journalists already in the mix -- jazz journalism for instance (I ask as president of the Jazz Journalists Association)? Like journalists involved with any particular topic not only arts, we must update our tools, absolutely.

Shifting the paradigm of what is "art" and what is journalism about it is, as Doug McLennan speaks about, is really valuable. Next step beyond that, I suppose, each art genre/category's specific place in the media arts firmament must be addressed by the professionals involved in its specific media. I.e., to get jazz or blues covered commensurate with what I considered its value, it behooves *me* (and my colleagues) to penetrate the prevailing assumptions about it vis a vis all over comparable (competing?) arts/musics. To make jazz worth media attention, I have to work in new formats popularized and made possible by new technology -- I can go with that.

So to benefit most from today's summit I ought to put apart my particular art form, but learn about journalism's "edges," as NPR's Anya G. is saying. She and now the editor from Cedar Rapids are addressing institutional platforms of extending the arts journalism they've currently got in place. What are the possibilities for individual non-affiliated arts journalists in all this -- must freelancers such as myself only hope to become a member of a staff (is there expectations such staffs will be grown?), or is there a way to independently create this new arts journalists and support the activity financially?