Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Not What You Thinks: How The Internet Is Destroying Us
We can at least say of the oil economy that its environmental damage, and consequent destruction of the human world, is only an epiphenomenon,...
Untethered: Our Lives Without Cables
"If the trend towards mobile phones continues, and there’s little reason to believe it won’t, landline phones could soon become an endangered species, much...
How Are We Supposed To Talk About The Future?
I too grew up imbibing common technotopian fantasies of the late-20th Century zeitgeist, of a belief in humanity’s manifest destiny of multi-planetary spread and...
Schick Happens: Portrait Of The Master Percussionist
“All these percussion solos from that period of time were written for young, acrobatic people. So the question is, what does an aging body,...
Ukraine’s Best Filmmakers Are Recording The War
The country's leading filmmakers, including Oleh Sentsov, Valentyn Vasyanovych, Serhiy Myhalchuk and Olga Beshmelnitsyna, are in the trenches, often literally, documenting Russian atrocities and...
Just Switch It Off: Why Great Numbers Of Australians Have Quit The News
Research from the University of Canberra found that heavy news use dropped from 69% in April 2020 to 51% in January 2021, while those expressing...
A Deconstructivist Guide To The Universe
The emergence of deconstructivism – an ungainly portmanteau of the mid-to-late twentieth-century philosophical movement, deconstruction, and 1920s Russian constructivism – suggested that the avant-garde's...
An Influential Literacy Educator Makes An About Face In How To Teach Reading
It may not inspire political campaign ads the way critical race theory does, but the debate over how to teach children to read —...
In The Age Of TikTok, TikTok At Cannes Hits Some Speed Bumps
Filmmakers from 44 countries submitted films to the competition, all between 30 seconds and three minutes in length. The top prize was shared between...
Aristotle’s Principles Of Storytelling Are As Fresh Now As Were Then
You may not agree with everything Aristotle says, but consider his ideas, and see if you don’t think they’re as fresh and brilliant today...
When The Artist IS The Content
Rather than the “death of the author” heralded by French novelist and philosopher Roland Barthes in the 1960s, are we now witnessing its counterpoint—a...
New Opera’s Hot Right Now. But Where Are The Funny Operas?
This isn’t to say opera shouldn’t be political — though I’m thoroughly skeptical of its ability to tackle social issues in a way that...
The Neuroscience Behind Music That Gives You Chills
It’s called “frisson,” and it’s the reason why music from artists featured on a recently released, scientifically-backed playlist of songs that researchers claim are...
Investigation: Live Nation Subsidiaries Got COVID Bail Out Money Intended For Indy Stages
Live Nation as a parent company did not directly receive any money from the program, but the government relief to its subsidiaries still protected...
The End Of The Middle Class Musician?
It’s hard to figure out how many people are making a middle-class living on music streaming, but I note that you don’t earn the...
Want To Know What’s Wrong With Broadway? Producer Emanuel Azenberg Will Tell You
We’ve chased away an audience. The theater owners hate the unions, the unions hate the producers and the producers hate the theater owner. None...
Canadian Government Wants To Spend $800 Million On Rebuilding BC Museum?
It has become a hot political issue: $789-million to build a new museum? That feels like a lot to some British Columbians, particularly as...
Iconic Seattle Actor John Aylward, 75
“An accomplished and widely respected actor, John left an indelible mark on the Seattle theater community and on everyone he collaborated with over his...
Public TV Fundraising Telethons Are Losing Their Effectiveness
An analysis by Contributor Development Partnership of March pledge results reported a 24% decline in the number of gifts year-over-year, a nearly 5.5% drop...
Workers At The Whitney Museum Protest Wages At Gala
Workers at the museum rang bells, chanted, and cheered when taxi drivers and chauffeurs who just dropped off their employers honked in support of...
The Ways Disabilities Are Being Portrayed Are Changing
Children’s literature is definitely getting better at representation. Indeed, when I asked disabled friends and acquaintances to name their favourite disabled character, almost all...
The Morality Of Critics
Although perhaps you might say that literary critics in a certain sense are custodians of the language. I think there has been a tradition,...
Could a New $100 Million Movie Studio Transform Newark’s Economy?
One study estimated that the Newark project could bring as many as 600 long-term jobs and a constellation of new business opportunities to the...
How Our Memory Is Becoming More Specialized
Memorizing can become a highly specialized act, based on regular practice and rehearsal. A singer, though fully capable of performing the role of say...
Head Of Cannes’ First Tiktok Festival Jury Quits Over Concerns About Independence
“The difficulty is that TikTok is a marketing-focused company and fails to understand creators and their independence…They kept asking me for reports on our...