Doug: Classic Appreciation

John: I wasn’t at all suggesting there wasn’t a place for the classics (when I was young I never appreciated all those disparaging remarks about “old chestnuts” as people used to call them. To me hearing them the first time, there was nothing old or tree-fruity about them). And I remember clearing the moment I decided I wanted to become a pianist – it was after a radio broadcast of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. I sent out the very next day to order the score.
I was just suggesting that lack of artistic imagination is almost always the result when you set a low bar. And that while it might seem like going after non-arts fans might seem to be the richest vein to try to mine (it’s such a big group), they’re much harder to convert into supporters of your work. I fear that newspapers spend so much time trying to chase after people who don’t want them that they neglect those they already have and that do care about them.
You say that most intelligent people you know read the daily paper. Unfortunately that’s no longer the case in many cities. It’s certainly not true here any more in Seattle. When I first started working at the Post-Intelligencer in 1988, everyone I knew read at least one of the two daily papers. By the time I left in 1999, that was no longer the case. The paper of choice here is the New York Times. Intelligent people disparage the local dailies. Not because of the traditional breaking news coverage – which both do a decent job of – but I think it’s because there’s too much dumb stuff in the mix. People like to feel like they’re smart (no matter how smart or dumb they are) and I think that for smart people, the dumbed-down dailies are an affront.
I so often hear people complain there’s nothing in the dailies here. That’s not really true. If you want to find out what the big issues are, the dailies are still the only place you can keep up. And there’s great reporting in both papers, almost every day. But the general level of dumbness makes people dismiss the entire package. The message isn’t “this is for people who care and want to be informed.” The message is “we’re trying desperately to figure out what (particularly young) readers want and how we can lure them in.”
You’re right that a lot of arts coverage has moved to the web. The opinions there, are, for the most part, filled with more personality. There’s starting to be some good reporting and commentary on the web, and I think that is definitely the future, given that traditional print seems to be abandoning arts journalism. Two excellent long-time established newspaper critics told me separately this year that they accepted buyouts at their newspapers because they felt the papers had left them. That is, the papers were no longer interested in what they were doing, and so they left to pursue more fertile ground.
I know that while you say you’re retiring, that people like you don’t really retire – they just move on to the next phase, and I’ll be interested to see what that next phase is. I’d like to thank you for coming on the blog this week and talking about the book, the arts and arts journalism. And I’d also like to thank you for the years of pleasure you’ve given many of us as a cogent writer about culture. I hate sounding like a fan, but there you have it.