Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Can Improv Make A Comeback?
The pandemic hurt every live art, but arguably none more than improv. Not only did struggles force the sale of three of its biggest...
Time To Retire The Word “User” In Referring To Web Users?
The original use of “user” can be traced back to the mainframe computer days of the 1950s. - MIT Technology Review
How Music Therapy Is Helping Homeless Kids Process Life
“Music provides an opportunity for people to process trauma in a different mode of expression.” - The New York Times
2024 Presidential Candidates: Which Is Better For The Arts?
We have some indications of how the arts and culture will fare under each president because, for the first time, we have two candidates...
Repairing Musical Instruments That Have Been Damaged In War
Some instruments needed to be treated rather like field dressings for soldiers. - The Strad
Information Overload Is Nothing New. We’ve Long Struggled With It
Kings, popes, and doges all found themselves gasping for air under a deluge of memorandums and correspondence. Philip II of Spain was frequently driven...
Why Reading Was Intended To Be Done Out Loud
Until approximately the tenth century, when the practice of silent reading expanded thanks to the invention of punctuation, reading was synonymous with reading aloud. Silent reading was...
Is AI Ruining Facebook?
The Meta AI experience has so far been a spam-filled one. Nowhere is that clearer than on Instagram where the search function, once a...
Report On Misogyny In The UK Music Industry Is Rejected
The report was widely heralded as a turning point. Finally, the boys’ club of the music industry was laid bare. But on Friday, April 19,...
German University Study Center Named Best New Building In Europe
The architects describe the building as acting like a microchip on a circuit board, a central meeting point connected to all parts of the...
No One Is Going To Buy Your Book
The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies...
Exit Interview: Chicago Lyric Opera’s Anthony Freud
I think the simplistic stereotype of my European colleagues assuming that American general directors are kicked around mercilessly by unconscionable wealthy donors is as...
FCC Fines Non-Profit WBAI For Broadcasting Commercials
FCC Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer says they negotiated a consent decree with Pacifica in which the broadcaster acknowledges that it has violated the...
Is TikTok Going Away Soon? Short Answer: No!
Should the court-y things not go in ByteDance’s favor, then? They could always push the next Congress, and the next president, to repeal the...
A Moral Obligation To Disrupt On Behalf Of The Planet?
As a citizen waking up to this terrible truth, as the situation becomes more and more desperate, does the obligation to take desperate measures...
The Recycle Wars: When Literature Begets Literature
The rewriting of old books is hardly a new practice, though it’s one that critics often like to complain about. Doesn’t anyone have an original...
Behind San Francisco Conservatory’s Big Bets On The Future
"At Curtis, it’s just the music, but we tell you you’ll know something about how the music business works and we think...
How Losing Non-Compete Clauses Will Affect Hollywood
“The new FTC rule shines a klieg light on how best to retain quality employees in the industry — noncompetes are on their way out, so...
Arts Council England Is Broken. Theatre Leaders Have Some Ideas To Fix It
Leaders from across the theatre sector have outlined their vision for a reformed Arts Council England, warning that an unchanged funding body could stoke...
Study: New Zealanders’ Participation In The Arts
Among the encouraging stats, participation in the arts has reached its highest level since the survey began in 2005, up to 54%. Young people, deaf and...
Study: Our Perception Of Time Is Influenced By What We Experience
When viewing larger or less-cluttered scenes, participants were more likely to experience time dilation; thinking that they had viewed the picture for longer than...
No-Name Philadelphia Pops Orchestra Now Wants The Name
The self-organized group of musicians playing under the No Name Pops banner is negotiating with the family of late pianist and conductor Peter Nero...
How America Got Hooked On Credit Card Culture
By the late 1960s, bankers increasingly saw credit cards, which combined innovative information technology with access to affluent consumer markets, as the road to...
Opera Philadelphia Picks A New General Director
Anthony Roth Costanzo, 41, has a history with Philadelphia going back almost 30 years. His first appearance at the Academy of Music was in 1996...
How AI Will Be (Is) Wrecking The Internet
LLMs have begun to disrupt the traditional relationship between writer and reader. Type how to fix broken headlight into a search engine, and it returns a...