Straight out of Texas, Rainey Knudsen, founder and director of Glasstire, was the star of the first ever National Summit on Arts Journalism, held in L.A. on Friday. More on Glasstire to follow, but first, a few words about Douglas McLennan, who conceived it and produced it with Sasha Anawalt.
McLennan is best known as founder and editor of ArtsJournal. If you’re reading this, you’re on an AJ site. ArtsJournal is an aggregate of arts news in English around the world, with the additional of a streaming rail of posts from AJ arts bloggers, including me.
More alliances: I live-blogged the summit, here, at Doug’s request. Throw in my friendship with him and clearly I have a dog in this, which influences but does not account for my belief that the summit went well.
Given the free fall of traditional arts journalism, this summit is the first to consider options for replacing it.
Tyler Green (AJ blogger) and Paddy Johnson (nonAJ blogger) were disappointed in advance. Both objected to the idea that a nonprofit can be a business. They say opening the competition to nonprofits was changing the rules.
Although I hesitate to dispute a business question with two people whose entrepreneurial savvy overwhelms my own, I side with the summit on this one. It never said nonprofits couldn’t apply or weren’t businesses.
Nor did it change the rules by “adding” five project models.
After an open call for entries, jurors selected five models to present at the conference. From these, NAJP members voted to select three top entries, all of whom will get cash awards, starting at $9,000. (Winners not yet announced.)
In addition, the Summit asked representatives from five businesses working in support of arts and/or arts journalism to present. They were not part of the contest, were not chosen by jurors and are not eligible for awards. In saying the summit added five projects after the fact, Johnson and Green are factually wrong.
Johnson also wrote that she didn’t watch the summit, which was live-streamed around the world and is still available. Disclosure is good, but why didn’t she watch, especially as she intended to write about it? Even though she was traveling when it took place, she could have caught it later.
On the other hand, I can’t help but admire the vigorous way she attacked McLennan’s baby. He was on the Warhol grants panel this year and successfully argued for her to get one. If speaking her version of truth to power means biting the hand that feeds her, she chomps down.
Back to Glasstire, which Johnson praised as a good model. (Note to Johnson: it’s a nonprofit.) It covers Texas, which is a way of covering the world, as a lot of art flows through the Lone Star State. In nearly a decade of existence online, Glasstire has attracted terrific writers and given them a platform to be regional without being narrow.
I also like that it’s not a design wonder. It serves those who want to think about art, not just click through razzle-dazzle. Its existence is a fundamental challenge to those who maintain that New York and L.A. are where the U.S. art action is, and artists/critics living elsewhere are delusional.
Hi Regina. We may recall that we have discussed this privately. As I noted in those emails, there is a fundamental difference in both mission and legal obligations between a business and a non-profit organization.
I think that one of the problems here is that not everyone is clear on what the terms mean.
I have not written that “the summit added five projects after the fact.”
Hi Tyler. I wasn’t quoting you. That’s the implication I got from reading your post. You did say the rules changed, and I don’t think they did.
Is there anyone more dogmatic than Paddy Johnson? Yes. Tyler Green. They make you look open-minded, Regina, and that’s a feat.
“Not-for-profit” is a tax status, not necessarily a business model.
NFPs provide vital services that would not available within the traditional free market. And one operating system does not eclipse the other: Bookstores (for-profit) survived — and some might argue THRIVED — alongside libraries (not-for-profits).
Of course, as one of those organizations Tyler mentioned (we didn’t apply because the rules called for new business models, and we’re a straightforward nonprofit, like glasstire), we were certainly disappointed when we found the NAJP had changed the rules of the contest.
Nonetheless, in the end, the Summit’s strengths were (1) as a marketing opportunity for online publications and (2) as an opportunity for writers to learn about organizations that might actually pay them (thanks to Bout What I Sees for this observation).
As a marketing opportunity, the Summit best served projects like glasstire-think how many hits they’ll get over the next couple of weeks.
As an opportuntiy for writers to learn what kinds of projects can actually pay them, it’s a bit disappointing to learn that flavorpill is one of our best bets. (In my opinion, that’s entertainment journalism, not art journalism). I would have loved to see more examples like Glasstire, which pays more for a review than in-print journals like Art Papers and Art Lies.
As the editor of an online journal, I felt like the Summit didn’t provide me all the information I needed to understand how these nonprofits/businesses are actually keeping afloat. The video presentations painted each project in broad strokes, rather than getting into the nitty gritty of running an organization. If we’re going to talk about business models, as the Summit promised to do, we need more transparency. We need to know exactly where the money’s coming from and where its going, and exactly what the administrative structure is that keeps things running smoothly.
Not to take this in another direction, but this does point out that AFC has been increasingly sloppy as of late. It is dogmatic, but also mainly focused on promoting the establishment of the art world. Not a lot of digging deep. It’s a mistake to equate her narrow, gossip-originated view to Greens. He does seem to do his research to back his views, as opposed to strategically attempting to climb the ladder.
Hello Artists Want Freedom: I read Paddy Johnson and Tyler Green regularly. If you’re equating me with them, I’m flattered.
I streamed the webcast on my little blog and watched it too. Even wrote some comments in response, nothing hostile or snarky. It was full of new and innovative ideas about arts journalism and arts technology. As far as I am concerned, it did its job and did it well.
The nitpicking and bickering in the arts bores me no end, so I have no particular interest in the business vs. nonprofit debate. The world is changing, I am embracing the changes, not fighting them.
The important thing to me is supporting artists, and the Summit did this in spades.
http://arts-america.blogspot.com/
I spent about 10 years in what was then the record business at retail stores and wholesale distributors before spending 20 years and counting working for a wide range of non-profits. While it’s true there are “fundamental differences” between for-profit and non-profit businesses, virtually all of these differences have to do with the tax code.
Being a non-profit is not a license to never have to balance the books, to never make payroll, to never earn revenue, to never satisfy customers, or any of the other things that all businesses have to do. There are many different ways for a non-profit to succeed, but there are far more ways for a non-profit to fail. This is equally true in the for-profit world.
Without knowing the details of any non-profit sites that didn’t apply because they didn’t consider themselves to be a business, I suggest that a non-profit organization which doesn’t think of consider itself as a business may not have a business model that would have been considered innovative in the context of this competition.