The move by owner H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest “places the region’s dominant news-gatherers under the auspices of the nonprofit Philadelphia Foundation. … That structure opens philanthropic avenues to fund the company’s journalism.”
How The Philadelphia Inquirer’s New Ownership Structure Will Work
“In simple terms, Philadelphia Media Network was donated to the Institute for Journalism in New Media, which is a subsidiary of the Philadelphia Foundation, the venerable nonprofit that holds $370 million in assets. In actuality, the transaction is more complex.”
Magical Thinking: What Prestidigitation Can Tell Us About Cognition
“Which is a better magic trick: turning a dove into a glass of milk, or a glass of milk into a dove? Turning a rose into a vase, or a vase into a rose? For most people, … in each case, they find the transformation from a nonliving object to a living thing more interesting – but why? Is it just more exciting to see a living thing appear than to have it vanish? Or is there something deeper at work?”
Laughing In The Face Of Danger: The State Of Satire In The Muslim World
“Cartoons depicting Muhammad are unthinkable in Muslim countries. But there are plenty of homegrown satirists poking fun at reactionaries, autocrats and jihadis. Our writers in Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon and Iraq explain where the line is drawn.”
Whose Job Is It To Raise An Engaged Audience?
“We need to raise our audience. As experienced audience members, we need to provide feedback regularly. Finally, it is our job as teachers in all facets to radicalize and actualize our students to understand the “why” and not just the “how” of making music for others.”
Choreographer Alonzo King, Making It As An African-American In A White Ballet World
“If you’re inferring that there is racism in America, it’s not just a black problem, it’s everybody’s problem. For me it’s important that a company looks like the world, or at least reflects its community. Which you don’t see. I hire people based on their talent, and in 30 years this company has looked like everything.”
Robert Stone, 77, Novelist Of Americans At War
The author of Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise “was widely regarded as one of the most significant novelists of his generation,” often compared to Conrad and Hemingway. “[He] took readers into the underworlds of drugs, violence and strife, both cultural and personal. His characters were sometimes strung out, often morally ambiguous and, above all, real.”
Data: Number Of Arts Jobs Declining (But Americans Spending More On Culture)
“In 2012, creative industries generated $698.7 billion in added value (total sales minus the cost of production), making up 3.8% of the US national GDP (more than the industries of construction, transportation, travel, tourism, or agriculture). The total US output for that year was $1.1 trillion.”
How Amazon Is Reinventing TV
“As surprising as the company’s breakthrough success with “Transparent” may be, it is also consistent with its history and identity. Amazon is the first digital streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best TV series. In other words, the company that has changed the way consumers buy everything from diapers to high-definition TVs is trying to disrupt yet another industry.”
What Does The List Of The New York Times’ Most-Read Stories Of 2014 Say About Us?
“Many of the most popular items from 2014 aren’t conventional news stories at all — they’re contributed content (Dylan Farrow’s open letter about Woody Allen), quizzes (2013′s “How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk was on the list for two years straight), and question-and-answer sessions (The Times’ Q and A on the Ebola crisis made the list).”
Measuring America’s Arts Audience
The NEA releases its latest study: “The latest SPPA compares arts participation rates based on surveys from 2002, 2008, and 2012, as well as regional, state, and metro-area statistics. Several of the findings are particularly noteworthy. Adults who attended performing arts or visited museums as children were three to four times as likely to see shows or visit museums as adults.”
Cities Are Becoming Inhospitable For Artists (But Not For The Traditional Reasons)
The “urban Renaissance” we are living through is a terrific example of solving a problem by not solving it, or rather, by turning it inside-out. We’ve imported suburbia to the city, recreating its bucolic aura via bike lanes and urban gardening, and its gated community vibe via “broken windows” policing. Soon it will have all those stereotypical negative characteristics of suburbia too: lack of human diversity, and commercial life crushed under chain stores. Meanwhile, we are exporting poverty to places where you need a car to survive.
Renzo Piano: Want To Preserve Historic Centers? Look To The Edges
“In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, the big challenge—in Europe certainly, but everywhere—was to establish as a principle that historic centers have to be preserved. But in the two-thousands—probably for the next three, four, five decades—the real challenge is to transform the periphery. If we fail in doing this, it will be a real tragedy.”
More Americans Are Enjoying The Arts Online And Not In Person, Says New NEA Study
“The NEA found that in 2012, nearly three-quarters of American adults – about 167 million people – used electronic media to view or listen to art. But just 33.4 percent of the more than 37,000 adults surveyed attended one of the seven categories of art events that same year, compared with 41 percent in 1992.”
Minnesota Orchestra’s Grammy-Winning Sibelius Cycle Is Back On
“The Minnesota Orchestra will resume recording sessions this spring to complete its cycle of Jean Sibelius symphonies. The project” – released on the Swedish label Bis – “had been put on hiatus during the 16-month lockout of musicians that ended a year ago.”
T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, And £20,000, To David Harsent
“After four previous appearances on the shortlist for the TS Eliot prize for poetry, David Harsent has finally taken the honour for his 11th collection of poems, Fire Songs. He was described by the chair of the judging panel, the poet and novelist Helen Dunmore, as ‘a poet for dark and dangerous days’.”
Rem Koolhaas And Dasha Zhukova Build A Moscow Museum
The Russian art collector “is launching an ambitious campaign to connect Moscow to the international art world, and she’s tapped [the Dutch architect] to execute her vision.”
English Theatre Closed Due To Statue Hanging From Roof
“Sunderland Empire has cancelled all shows this week after high winds caused the statue on the roof of its building to break loose.”
Charlie Hebdo’s Next Cover Features Muhammad Himself (Because Even He Is Charlie)
Never ones for prudence, the satirical French weekly’s editors have made the Prophet – holding a Je suis Charlie” sign – the cover boy for what they’re calling the Survivors’ Issue.
The Real Problem With “My Husband’s Not Gay”
“The problem, though, with making reality television about gay men who don’t want to be gay is that it will invariably lack empathy for the pain that likely defines those men’s lives. The failure of My Husband’s Not Gay is one of style, not substance; but the fact that it has been protested for its substance says a lot about the cultural tensions surrounding homosexuality in America.”
Why Is Narrative Powerful Enough To Change Minds And Even Politics? It Rewires Our Brains
“For thousands of years, we’ve known intuitively that stories alter our thinking and, in turn, the way we engage with the world. But only recently has research begun to shed light on how this transformation takes place from inside. Using modern technology like functional MRI scanning, scientists are tackling age-old questions: What kind of effect do powerful narratives really have on our brains? And how might a story-inspired perspective translate into behavioural change?”
The Etymology Of “Cockamamie” Is Just That
Lexicographer Ben Zimmer talks to Lexicon Valley‘s co-hosts about the verkakte Yiddish origins of this meshuggene word. (podcast)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.12.15
NEA Reveals The Real Targets For Art Museum
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-01-12
Statistical Shenanigans: AAMD Plays the Numbers on Admission Fees (so does Indianapolis Museum)
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-01-12
Justifying the Strange Artist
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-01-12
Monday Recommendation: Jimmy Greene
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-01-12
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Renzo Piano Wants To Fix Italy’s Blighted Suburbs
As soon as the architect became a member of the Italian Senate, “he handed over the office, along with his government salary, to six much younger architects and asked them to come up with ways to improve the periferie – the often run-down neighborhoods that ring Rome and Italy’s other major cities.”
The Last Time I Smiled: On Living With Facial Paralysis
Jonathan Kalb: “For the past thirteen years, my smile has been an incoherent tug-of-war between a grin on one side and a frown on the other: an expression of joy spliced to an expression of horror. … If a stranger approaches me smiling and I try to return the greeting, I watch the person’s face fade into apprehension and wariness.”