Basically this is the end of my (pre-2010!) U.S. professional life: first the burnout ("Hallelujah! It's Messiah time again, the most 'Wonderful' time of the year!") then the elimination of all arts/culture coverage at my paper. The current state of things does make me wonder if arts organizations themselves at all miss regular, rigorous, objective mainstream-media coverage of their work and workings — coverage that, negative or not, used to be a measure of their importance in a community. I doubt it. So easy now to fire off their own social media posts about how 'excited' they are about everything they do. It is so if they say so, right?
What's the situation, arts- and criticism-wise, in the US dailies, Ted? I think large ones still do a decent enough job -- when there's performing arts happening, that is. The WaPo, the SanFran Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the whatevers? I think there are still critics in US dailies which are not called the New York Times, if perhaps fewer working full-time on criticism only, but I haven't checked.
It's as bad as you describe in Canada, certainly in terms of full-time staff critics, as even the largest papers get bought up by giant chains and venture capital firms. (The latter is what happened to mine, whereupon a good 100 employees were let go within a couple of years.) The NY Times and WaPo (well, Jeff Bezos) are among the few major independent holdouts, and there are still a few active staff critics at both, but nothing like it was. The first thing these number-cruncher types here target is arts/culture, at whatever level. The 'other' Boston paper actually got a foundation grant to fund a classical music critic because it wanted to say it had one and appeal to its allegedly highbrow readers but didn't want to spend its own resources. (No grant-funded sports reporters as far I know, hah!) There was some flack over the foundation's links to various entities that might have resulted in a conflict of interest, but since it's just classical music and who cares, that controversy blew over fast.
Ah yes, I remember that. Zoe Madonna. I think the last critic at the Star also wrote for them as a freelancer thanks to some foundation funding, but that couldn't last. Today he's an Anglican minister somewhere on your NE coast.
The other question you ask -- if the thing's going to be missed by the artists at all -- is a huge one, and I didn't get into it. I think short-term, the artists won't care. Long term, all but the mega-stars will end up missing it. It may affect ticket sales too and the survival of the all kinds of arts in smaller countries like Canada. But I hope I'm wrong. I *am* biased.
Basically this is the end of my (pre-2010!) U.S. professional life: first the burnout ("Hallelujah! It's Messiah time again, the most 'Wonderful' time of the year!") then the elimination of all arts/culture coverage at my paper. The current state of things does make me wonder if arts organizations themselves at all miss regular, rigorous, objective mainstream-media coverage of their work and workings — coverage that, negative or not, used to be a measure of their importance in a community. I doubt it. So easy now to fire off their own social media posts about how 'excited' they are about everything they do. It is so if they say so, right?
What's the situation, arts- and criticism-wise, in the US dailies, Ted? I think large ones still do a decent enough job -- when there's performing arts happening, that is. The WaPo, the SanFran Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the whatevers? I think there are still critics in US dailies which are not called the New York Times, if perhaps fewer working full-time on criticism only, but I haven't checked.
It's as bad as you describe in Canada, certainly in terms of full-time staff critics, as even the largest papers get bought up by giant chains and venture capital firms. (The latter is what happened to mine, whereupon a good 100 employees were let go within a couple of years.) The NY Times and WaPo (well, Jeff Bezos) are among the few major independent holdouts, and there are still a few active staff critics at both, but nothing like it was. The first thing these number-cruncher types here target is arts/culture, at whatever level. The 'other' Boston paper actually got a foundation grant to fund a classical music critic because it wanted to say it had one and appeal to its allegedly highbrow readers but didn't want to spend its own resources. (No grant-funded sports reporters as far I know, hah!) There was some flack over the foundation's links to various entities that might have resulted in a conflict of interest, but since it's just classical music and who cares, that controversy blew over fast.
Ah yes, I remember that. Zoe Madonna. I think the last critic at the Star also wrote for them as a freelancer thanks to some foundation funding, but that couldn't last. Today he's an Anglican minister somewhere on your NE coast.
Wow, there's a career change!
The other question you ask -- if the thing's going to be missed by the artists at all -- is a huge one, and I didn't get into it. I think short-term, the artists won't care. Long term, all but the mega-stars will end up missing it. It may affect ticket sales too and the survival of the all kinds of arts in smaller countries like Canada. But I hope I'm wrong. I *am* biased.
I hope you're wrong, too — but you usually aren't!