Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
McWhorter: The Evolution (And Pleasure) Of Discovering How Other Languages Work
Partly because I am this strange thing called a linguist and partly because I am the kind of linguist who wants to know a...
David Brooks: Taking Refuge In The Arts
The normal thing to say about such experiences is that you’ve lost yourself in a book or song — lost track of space and...
The Confusing Case Of The Roald Dahl Edits
Despite the indignation of the critics and the high-mindedness of the revisers, the truth is that most of the edits to the Dahl books...
By The Numbers: Oscars Have Made Progress In Diversity
Looking at the eight years before and after #OscarsSoWhite, the USC study found that 8% of nominees between 2008 and 2015 were from underrepresented...
Theatre Curtain Calls Used To Mean More…
The thing is, audiences love to go crazy. It means the tickets were worth it. - NPR
Why MSNBC’s Black Audience Is Soaring
On top of leading Black viewership among cable networks with 173,000 Black viewers on average in February — ahead of CNN’s 105,000 Black viewers...
Jazz Great Wayne Shorter, 89
His career reached across more than half a century, largely inextricable from jazz’s complex evolution during that span. His sound was brighter on soprano,...
Is “Post-Truth” The Result Of A Common World?
Hannah Arendt argues that while objectivity, as the view from nowhere, might be both an impossible and undesirable aim, there has been ever since...
When Big Brands Steal Unknown Artists’ Work
For the many independent artists who say that work they have posted online — in hopes of attracting paying gigs, or at least an...
Ukraine Commemorates Start Of The War With A Banksy Stamp
On February 24, the first anniversary of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, the Ukrainian postal service released a new stamp featuring a Banksy mural and...
Katha Pollitt: The Case For Not Censoring Roald Dahl
Did it start out as a few modest tweaks but got out of hand? In any case, there’s a loss in these changes—in vivacity,...
As Small Businesses Collapse, Music Stores Are Closing. This Matters
If we take away music’s “shop window”, it recedes yet further out of view. There is not even the possibility that someone might walk past,...
How Vinyl Records Became Cool Again
Everything the music industry had learned in the twentieth century pointed to vinyl’s demise in the twenty-first. And it’s true that physical formats are...
How “Lord Of The Rings” Was Adopted By Italy’s Far-Right
Although the link between J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic and Italy's far-right is not new, it's a phenomenon that has re-surfaced with new vigor since...
100-Year-Old Historic Toronto Theatre To Be Torn Down
The proposal comes as a rash of other live performance venues have shuttered across the city in recent years. If the project moves forward, theatre...
The Machines With An Unconscious?
Writers, someone once said, are already writing machines; or at least they are when things are going well. The whole point of the metaphor was to...
A Reader/Writer Laments: “I’ve Lost The Pleasure Of Reading”
I continue to struggle with an imaginative leap into a world that is entirely not my own. I can’t quite seem to achieve the...
Objects Have Feelings Too?
In her view, we are often pushed around, one way or another, by the stuff we come into contact with on any given day....
Technology Changes The Ways We Think About Creativity. Take The Lowly Drum Machine…
A good music technology becomes a new source of creativity; it can be hacked and bent in ways that its own designers may not...
Video Games Are Mainstream And Growing. So Why Are Gaming Journalists Losing Their Jobs?
A ton of journalists on the games beat have suddenly found themselves out of jobs. The field is in the midst of a brutal,...
UK’s National Lottery Fund Will Refocus On Longterm Heritage Benefits, Less On Quick Hits
Perhaps the key difference will be for the fund to look for longer-term benefits. Short-term benefits are easily measured, but research by the fund...
Why Wall Street Is Bullish On Movie Theatres Again
“The pendulum is swinging back to some sense of normalcy and balance as market watchers see theatrical box office returns from major releases ...
The Culture Of Politics Inside Orchestras
“I’m always conscious that there’s always someone watching how you’re behaving and listening to how you’re playing. The politics of where to sit on...
Grand Ambitions: When Encyclopedias Thought To Collect Up All The Knowledge In The World
Encyclopedias have always been a hard sell. Moving a hefty set of books at a big ticket price—toward its last days Britannica sold for...
Our Digital World Raises Fundamental Questions About Our Concepts Of Freedom
“Digital dualism” is finally on life support, replaced by a dawning recognition that the distinction between offline and online has collapsed. Instead, we face...
