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THE latest of my series for Salon on the damage the recession, digital technology and the Internet have exerted on the creative class runs today. I’m consumed with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend but will try to post on it more extensively later.
This piece looked at the crisis and said, Why aren’t we hearing about it? Why has it not entered the cultural conversation? And why do is our first gut reaction that artists and creative types are, as one of my sources puts it, idle dreamers?
I’ll just say this one required the most work, the most research and I think has the most depth and sweep. HERE is the new piece.
Fantastic journalism. I hope you will turn this series into a book. Really great work Scott.
Very much enjoyed your piece in Salon. Have been wondering for years why there’s no public works projects for artists, like there was in the depression, funding so much of what is now our American heritage. Thanks for letting me know, now, the why.
This is a very good piece in a lot of ways, but the pointless quotes by Robert J. Thompson make it appear lazier than it is. Thompson’s no expert on these issues, and his standard-issue, clichéd empty quotes really bring down the article, making it feel more like a puff piece than it is. Why did you feel the need to get his opinion on such a topic?
Thanks, folks — glad this story seemed to stir people up. As for Robert Thompson, I thought he could push me into a big-picture historical context I’d not otherwise consider, and he lived up to my hopes.