Recently by Laura Collins-Hughes

Persisting with a False Dichotomy

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
"Web Passes Papers as a News Source," the New York Times headline this morning says. Which is sort of like saying that rectangles have passed squares as shapes. Squares are a category of rectangles; newspapers are a category of all the news sources available online.

The Times item, based on a Pew report, explains that the finding "does not represent a decline in the popularity of newspapers, which actually picked up a percentage point over last year. Rather, it represents a near-doubling, from 24 percent last year, in the number of people naming the Internet as their primary news source" for national and international news. (Two quibbles: The Internet was cited by 40 percent of respondents, which is not at all close to double 24 percent. Also, the item doesn't mention another finding of the report, which is that TV remains by far the most popular source for national and international news.)

But the way we talk about things matters, and newspapers continue to present a false dichotomy that pits newspapers against the Internet. Print is withering; witness the news event occurring today on the Times' own front page, which for the first time carries a display ad. (Remember when we had the luxury of outrage over page 1 display ads?) But newspapers' survival is not an either-or, print-vs.-online proposition, and to shape the public conversation that way is to increase the peril we're in by encouraging a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to figure out how to sell all those eyes that are already consuming newspapers online. We don't need to concede defeat to a medium that has made it easier than ever to reach an audience hungry for journalism.
January 5, 2009 7:00 AM | | Comments (0)

NEA Is Late to the Theater

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
The NEA's sparkling-new brochure, "All America's a Stage: Growth and Challenges in Nonprofit Theater," manages to feel dated even on the day of its release.

Take this paragraph from Dana Gioia's generally upbeat preface:

Has the nonprofit theater sector expanded too quickly? Seemingly not. Despite the broad and rapid expansion of nonprofit theaters, these organizations have generally healthy finances. Their balance sheets are strong, with assets growing and liabilities remaining flat. Nonprofit theaters have also effectively diversified their sources of support. Individual patrons have collectively increased their already high levels of giving, providing over 40 percent of contributed revenue.

Since strong balance sheets are transparently no longer the status quo, I can't help wondering if the paragraph that follows was shoehorned in so that the report wouldn't appear completely irrelevant, not to say delusional. It reads, in full:

The only area for concern in the healthy financial profile of the nonprofit theaters is their historical vulnerability to large economic downturns. During both of the last two major recessions, total revenue and contributions fell markedly. This vulnerability could create issues for the nonprofit theater community in the current recession.

Oh, that.

Briskly moving on, Gioia grimly identifies "one significant and persistent problem facing American theater--attendance for spoken theater has steadily deteriorated." (The shrinking audience may be due in part to "lower media coverage," he says.) But there's good news! "These audience declines do not seem primarily dependent on high ticket prices. Audiences appear willing to pay higher prices for events they want to attend."

Uh, a pair of predictions: In future research, the audience for musical theater will be found to have declined around now, too -- as will cash-strapped theaters' ability to produce musicals. And ticket prices will be found to have been very much an issue.
December 15, 2008 9:48 AM | | Comments (0)

The Critic vs. His Paper (and the Orchestra)

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
Show of hands: How many of the writers out there have ever been ordered by an editor or publisher to back off "negative" coverage of a prominent institution that's pressuring your news outlet? (My hand is up.) How many of the editors out there have ever been pressured by higher-ups to fire a critic because of complaints from a prominent institution that's feeling persecuted by bad reviews? (My hand is up again.)

For anyone who's been in either of those infuriating, too-common positions, there's no way not to be heartened by former Cleveland Plain Dealer classical music critic Donald Rosenberg's possibly quixotic lawsuit protesting his removal from his beat. From today's Plain Dealer: 

Plain Dealer reporter Donald Rosenberg has sued the newspaper, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Musical Arts Association among others for what he called a conspiracy to oust him from a beat he held for 15 years.

In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Rosenberg charges that the arts association and other defendants launched a campaign to destroy his reputation as a music critic following a 2004 article that presented the orchestra's conductor, Franz Welser-Möst, in a negative light.

It's nice to see Rosenberg taking a stand, whether or not he has a leg to stand on, legally.
December 12, 2008 12:37 PM | | Comments (0)

Competing Texas Dailies To Share Critics

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
Former NAJP fellow Jerome Weeks -- who is also a former longtime staff book and theater critic for The Dallas Morning News, now a producer-reporter at KERA in Dallas -- reports this dismal devolution:

In the Dallas and Fort Worth daily newspapers, there will no longer be separate reviews of many cultural organizations and events. The two city papers, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, have begun running the same review by the same writer. It's the latest development in what has been a series of cutbacks affecting area arts reporting and reviewing. With newspapers across the country facing serous financial problems, maintaining an individual, local critic's voice is no longer a priority, even when the arts in question are locally based.

Here's the full story.
December 10, 2008 10:04 PM | | Comments (0)

At 17

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
The e-mail showed up in my inbox this morning, and I cringed as I read the subject line: "Support LAByrinth by joining THE 17 CAMPAIGN!" Another fund-raising pitch, this one from LAByrinth Theater Company, the innovative, guy-heavy troupe that boasts a long-term residency at the Public Theater and boldface name Philip Seymour Hoffman as co-artistic director.

A lot of excellent new work percolates at LAByrinth, much of it in the company's series of free staged readings, one of which operates under the spectacular name Live Nude Plays. So it wasn't the worthiness of the pitch that put me off; it was the seeming futility of launching a fund-raising campaign in this climate.

But LAByrinth, which is in its 17th year, is doing something rather clever here: It's asking for a mere $17 -- or, "if you can afford it," $17 per quarter, month or week.

If other arts organizations are willing to be this creative in their thinking, things might not get so bleak after all.
December 8, 2008 1:20 PM | | Comments (0)

The Herd Thins

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
Variety offers this grim little roundup of what it calls the "mass exodus" of New York theater critics in recent weeks.
December 3, 2008 3:13 AM | | Comments (0)

As CNN Challenges the AP ...

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
... will arts coverage in general and arts criticism in particular be left behind? This is what I kept wondering as I read the New York Times piece today on CNN's new wire service.

Every time a newspaper I've worked for has considered cutting a wire service, fear has struck the arts staff. Newspaper managers are unlikely to do without a service that gives them national, international, sports, and business coverage, and CNN surely knows that. No doubt the network comprehends the indispensability of entertainment coverage as well; a recent ad for CNN Wire news editors seeks, among others, a "Los Angeles-based news editor, focusing on entertainment news." But arts coverage has never been a TV-news strong suit, and it's grown weaker and weaker in recent years. Arts criticism on TV is nearly nonexistent.

Unlikely as it is that CNN will grasp the importance of substantial coverage of the arts -- which both the AP, particularly in books and theater, and Bloomberg News, particularly in visual art, do offer -- it may be even less likely that those who call the shots at newspapers will demand it.
December 1, 2008 10:45 AM | | Comments (0)

A Quick Quibble ...

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
... with John Rockwell's Slow Journalism post, below.

Maybe the pressure of the Internet -- the desire to put the post up -- foiled you somehow, John, because I don't believe you meant to suggest that Internet journalism is dishonorable, which is how one could read your last sentence: "Either way, it is very much the opposite of the honorable, salutary, quaint or Luddite aspirations of the slow folk."

Or did you mean that the pressure for speed is dishonorable? It's highly dangerous, sure, and there's more of that pressure than there's ever been. But dishonorable? I think that's a step too far.

So this post is mainly just to ask: What did you mean?

Think of it as a speed bump.
November 18, 2008 9:20 AM | | Comments (0)

Recommending Rupe (Startling but True)

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
It doesn't happen often that I'm in enthusiastic agreement with Rupert Murdoch, but the argument he made yesterday in a radio address about the future of newspapers is smart and strong. From the AP story:

Global media magnate Rupert Murdoch says doomsayers who are predicting the Internet will kill off newspapers are "misguided cynics" who fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers.

Here's a chunk of the speech:

In the 21st century, people are hungrier for information than ever before. And they have more sources of information than ever before.

Amid these many diverse and competing voices, readers want what they've always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future.

If you discuss the future with newspapermen, you will find that too many think that our business is only physical newspapers. I like the look and feel of newsprint as much as anyone. But our real business isn't printing on dead trees. It's giving our readers great journalism and great judgment.

"In short, we are moving from news papers to news brands," he added.

It's a longish talk, and I'm certainly not in accord with Murdoch all the way through. But the full speech is worth a read, or a listen.

As he said, "The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world."

Paper, after all, isn't fundamental to the business; journalists' skills are. We overlook that at our peril.

Now, to get the financial model in order....
November 17, 2008 8:02 PM | | Comments (0)

Inoffensive or Your Money Back

By
Laura Collins-Hughes
Impeccably timed to remind us that Americans are not, in fact, moving into the future at the same pace is this little controversy from Missouri, the red state that nearly went blue in the presidential election: A recent student production of Christopher Durang's 1979 dark comedy, "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You," managed to severely discomfort subscribers at Southeast Missouri State University. As the campus newspaper, The Arrow, puts it in a headline today, "'Sister Mary' explains all too much for some."

According to the local paper, the Southeast Missourian, "Patrons of student performances at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus will receive refunds if they were offended by a recent play and won't see controversial offerings included in future season ticket packages." It further notes: "One of the people most offended by the performance was the theater's namesake, who wrote a letter to the school that 'a play that ridicules and scorns the Christian religion under the label of satire is inappropriate to be included in the offering of season ticket holders.'"

Eyebrow-raising as this mini-tempest may be (who knew Durang could still provoke outrage, even in Missouri?), the real surprise kicks in when we get down to cash: A subscription ticket to "Sister Mary Ignatius" cost all of $6.40.

But those who are successfully offended by the mere prospect of another play in the season, Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," scheduled for the spring, can get their money back for that, too.
November 13, 2008 9:57 AM | | Comments (1)
« Robert Christgau | Main Index | Archives | Patti Hartigan »


Our Bloggers

Archives

Journalism News

Opportunities

Categories

about (3) blogroll (1) news (10) opportunities (2)

Tag Cloud

Blogroll

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.


About

    ARTicles Arts journalism is changing underneath us. Every news organization is rethinking how it covers culture, and every week brings new evidence of those changes. We are members of the National Arts Journalism Program, an association of some 500 arts and... more

    NAJP NAJP is America's largest organization dedicated to the advancement of arts and cultural journalism. The NAJP has produced research, publications and discussions and works to bring together journalists, artists, news executives, cultural organization administrators, funders and others concerned with arts... more

    Join NAJP Join America's largest organization of arts journalists. Here's how... more

see all archives

Contact: articles@najp.org

Recent Comments