Summit on the Future of Arts Journalism
Many people—among them artists, critics, and gallery owners—have recently expressed concern about the current state of arts journalism: The rapid rate at which it is disappearing from the nation’s newspapers is staggering. (See this Miller-McCune article for a report on the subject.) Websites like BurnAway.org are one response to the lack of printed arts-related information available to the public. But, in addition to blogs, what else is being done to counter the decline in print-based arts journalism?
The USC Annenberg School for Communication and the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP) hope to answer this question on Friday, October 2, 2009. That day they will hold a National Summit on Arts Journalism in Los Angeles that will stream live on the web beginning at noon EST. The summit will present the best five new arts journalism projects as selected by a panel of distinguished arts journalists. A live audience of cultural leaders, journalists, media entrepreneurs, and funders will discuss these models and ask questions about them. The event will be live-blogged, and will include questions and comments from the online audience.
Happily, the Summit will be archived, so anyone who misses it will be able to catch it later. Once it concludes, members of the NAJP and alumni of the NEA Arts Journalism Institutes will vote on the five Summit projects. First, second, and third place winners will be announced in late October.
As of this writing, three projects have been submitted to the National Summit on Arts Journalism website. To read about them, and to keep an eye on future submissions, click here.
I found a video of a related summit from last year. The panel is about the Slow Journalism movement:
Slow Journalism video
Basically, the idea is to give up the normal practice of trying to “scoop” everyone else. Why compete with each other so desperately, at the sacrifice of quality? Especially when the number of writers has decreased, and the amount of hours we can dedicate, with or without pay, has slimmed to almost nill.
And here’s another article, lamenting the “scattershot” coverage of traditional criticism:
A Future For Journalism About The Arts
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