Friday, December 3, 2004

Shrinking media and lagging coverage

Back in 1999, the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia did a study of arts coverage in major metropolitan news sources (including newspapers, network television, online media, the alternative press and the ethnic press). The report intended to be a benchmark for future studies, tracking trends in arts reporting, arts attention, and even arts column inches over time.

Years later, NAJP has released a second report on how that universe has changed for arts reporting. And the news isn't particularly good. From the press release:

...while more Americans than ever are participating in cultural activities and the arts have gained in size and complexity, the resources that metro-area newsrooms allocate to the arts are generally flat or in retreat. Overall, there are fewer arts-related articles; newsrooms are devoting more of their arts space to listings; and electronic media are supplanting newspapers as a source for arts coverage.

More specifically, the recent study found that while arts sections had maintained 'relative positions of prominence at metropolitan newspapers,' they had the same relative slice of a smaller pie. Newspapers are shrinking, as it turns out, and arts coverage is shrinking along with them. Also, the stories that did make the paper were shorter on average than five years ago. The biggest losses of column inches were by newspaper staffers, who lost ground to freelancers, syndicated content, and wire services in total arts coverage.

Events listings also held their ground as column inches declined, leaving less space for narrative in the newspaper pages.

The report also discovered that even mass entertainment was slowly being slighted by the media mechine:

The tabloid television news programs -- Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood and Extra -- teem with celebrity soundbites and entertainment clips. Yet almost half their content concerns gossip, scandal and non-show-business stories rather than coverage of mass entertainment itself.

There's good stuff in this report, and some distracting essays in the back worth a moment of your time (see Robert Brustein on theater criticism, and Joseph Horowitz on classical music criticism...which seems perpetually at a crossroads).

I often wonder who actually reads these kinds of reports, beyond their authors, their funders, and scattered policy geeks like me. But it's a fascinating endeavor to measure what we value over time by the inches in a newspaper and the moments on the tube. I hope a slightly wider circle will give it a look.

posted on Friday, December 3, 2004 | permalink