OC Register kills its Arts Blog

I was surprised and saddened to learn that the editors of the Orange County Register (where I was the dance critic for 18 years) have decided to shut down the blog written by the Register's three remaining arts staff writers/critics: The Arts Blog. My friend and former colleague Tim Mangan, an award-winning classical music writer with a devoted following, said the staff was told Friday. He does not say why the plug was pulled. Arts coverage will continue, apparently, in the "print product" and on the website. From my vantage, it's one more in an endless string of hari-kari choices that have diminished this once-excellent regional newspaper. 

I had forgotten that Tim was pioneer blogger in the arts section, the first to launch us into new territory when he accompanied the Pacific Symphony on its inaugural European tour in March 2006. He was a natural at it: witty, wry, clever, conversational and opinionated. He went mano-a-mano with inferior technology that kept him up half the night as he tried to post and send reviews. But when he came back from Europe and returned to the newsroom (oops, I mean the "content center"), he kept at it, urging the rest of us to give it a try. 

Soon, it wasn't a choice - it was mandatory. We all had to blog, and we had to market ourselves and we had to market the blog, and there were ominous-sounding threats of what might happen if we didn't get our numbers up. We got weekly reports of how many reader "clicks" we had. All of a sudden, we were expected to perform like the real estate blog (overpriced McMansions being the engine that runs things, or at least, they were until the crash of 2008). So we all (more or less) looked for topics that would draw eyeballs. The visual arts critic hit pay dirt when "The Real Housewives of Orange County" became a part of his beat. 

At its best, The Arts Blog was a lively conversation with readers near and far about music, theater, visual arts and dance. I don't know the official reason that the blog was dropped. Still, theater (and now dance) critic Paul Hodgins notes in an addendum that The Arts Blog is one of the most widely read blogs about classical music. That was not good enough, apparently.