One of the big failings of traditional media is its fetishization of "objectivity" in the face of facts. At its best, objectivity is an attempt at fairness to present opposing views. But too often it reflexively reduces issues to non-sensical polarized he said/she said arguments without the journalistic application of facts. If I say the sky is green, is it the reporter's job to report the story … [Read more...]

Krystian Zimerman is one of the world's best pianists. Sunday night he was making his debut at LA's Disney Hall. And then:Before playing the final work on his recital, Karol Szymanowski's "Variations on a Polish Folk Theme," Zimerman sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience. In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that … [Read more...]

In the early '00's, the movie industry looked on as the music industry's business model was cannibalized by file sharing services. Bandwidth issues bought Hollywood a few extra years to figure out how to adapt to the digital threat. Eventually iTunes proved a viable model to sell music over the web, even as the recording industry devolved into smaller pieces. The movie industry did indeed benefit … [Read more...]

The genius of Steve Jobs is not that he has great ideas. Many people have great ideas. It's not that he can hire people with great ideas, or even that he can recognize a great idea when he hears it. The genius of Steve Jobs is that he has the ability to look at a great idea and figure out whether there's a business model to support it. There is no shortage of people who seem to have figured out … [Read more...]

Two articles over on the ARTicles blog at the National Arts Journalism Program. First, Laura Collins-Hughes has a take on this year's Pulitzer for theatre and why it's important that the finalists are all women:...women playwrights are vastly underrepresented on our stages. Because "diversity" isn't just a buzzword. The Pulitzer isn't important in itself; it matters because of its ripple effect. … [Read more...]

Mark Ravenhill argues that endless choice has shortened our attention spans, to the detriment of all art.Maybe we should blame the invention of the TV remote control: people often do. At some point around 30 years ago, it became possible to hop aimlessly between channels. Programme-makers became convinced that they had to make a pitch for their show in its opening few seconds, and then keep on … [Read more...]

The high-profile launch this week of an effort to create a paid pass to access news content got a lot of attention because of the principals involved. JournalismOnline is the idea of veteran media execs Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery. Their venture aims to supply publishers with ready-made tools to charge Internet fees, an idea that has gained currency as advertising revenue … [Read more...]

A shameless plug for a piece on All Things Considered by Laura Sydell on what's happening with arts journalism as newspapers drop arts coverage. As I say in the piece, IMHO what's happening is not the destruction of arts journalism, but the reinvention of it. Arts journalism has often had an uneasy home in newspapers, and arts coverage was relegated to the "soft" sections. In recent years, the … [Read more...]

I love this - art made from the distinctive spine patterns of the first 15 years of Wired magazine. Question: is there a discernible pattern or plan to the way Wired planned this out over the years? A code, a DNA map, or the weaving of an issue-by-issue genome perhaps? … [Read more...]

People want things how they want them. In Japan, "five of last year's top ten best-selling novels started life as mobile phone - or keitai - novels." There was a time when mobile phones were used simply to communicate. In high-speed Japan, where more than 100 million people own mobile phones, they are not only a platform for novelists, but for all forms of artistic expression. The last time I … [Read more...]

It's hard to accept the premise that newspapers are worth saving when they cut away the reasons to buy them. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has pretty much declared it's out of the culture coverage business by getting rid of its arts staff, including a few critics who have had national prominence. Art critic Catherine Fox has been a bright light nationally, covering antiquities. Arts journalism … [Read more...]

The Times of London is running a poll to pick the favorite artist of the 20th Century. "Readers and visitors were asked to nominate their favourite artists working since 1900 from a list including some of the most influential painters, sculptors, photographers, video and installation artists of the period. After 1 million+ votes cast, the leading 300 artists are now listed below in alphabetical … [Read more...]

Poynter's Martin Langeveld says our assumptions that the online audience for newspapers is much bigger than the print audience are flat out wrong. All generally accepted truths notwithstanding, more than 96 percent of newspaper reading is still done in the print editions, and the online share of the newspaper audience attention is only a bit more than 3 percent. That's my conclusion after I got … [Read more...]

Much of the big shift in our culture right now is a re-ordering of power. For the past 50 years, mass culture, fueled by TV, has been a dominant power. When success is measured in millions of eyeballs (or ears), quality is a secondary commodity. Mass culture has permeated the ways we think about all culture. Power in the mass culture model is controlled by gatekeepers - the TV networks, radio … [Read more...]

At a time when the American newspaper industry increasingly considers ways to lock down its content and put it behind pay walls, the ever-innovative Guardian newspaper is flinging wide its gates and making it easier for others to take and use its content. Last month the paper announced something it's calling "Open Platform", which is a set of tools that allows anyone to build applications to pull … [Read more...]