LA Times on decreasing arts coverage

[sandik]

The National Arts Journalism Project (an arm of the journalism school at Columbia) has released another dispiriting study about the decrease in space for arts writing.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions

(you have to register to read the piece, but here's the crux)

"But daily journalism is really about space — the never-ending quest to maximize and utilize the precious "news hole" allocated to individual reporting beats. This is where arts coverage has suffered the worst casualties recently. Simply put, at a time when the arts have been proliferating across America, the number of column inches devoted to arts and entertainment in most papers has remained, at best, constant. And in many dailies, the coverage has decreased."

The denizens of Ballet Alert come from a fairly wide geographic spread, so let's hear it -- what is the coverage like in your community. Fair? Biased? Non-existant? Aside from the news you read here, where do you get your information about your local dance community?

[Alexandra]

Thank you for posting that, Sandik, even if it is dispiriting news!

Arts coverage at the Washington Post has decreased significantly since I began writing for them, even though we currently have an editor who cares very much about the arts (even dance!)

The first blow was back in the early 1970s (before I was writing for them ) when "The Women's Pages" became Style -- something for everyone. Whch meant men. The paper switched from covering arts, fashion and parties to covering politics and entertainment. (My argument: you guys already have sports and business; can't we just have one section?)

The second was during the recession in the late 1980s when the Style section lost 4 pages because of decreased advertising revenues. This is when the paper stopped reviewing cast changes of major companies. Ironically, they had just hired an arts editor -- then they had two high-ranking Style editors who really really really wanted to have more arts coverage. She spent her first month cancelling already commissioned pieces.

The third has been during the past 5-6 years or so, and I think it's because they have more sophisticated measuring systems. To be fair to the papers, very few people read arts coverage. It's a chicken and egg situation. Newspapers used to provide what would now be called "elitist" coverage: We know what's what, and this is someone you should read about. Now that this is out of fashion and we only cover what people already know and care about, this means that "the arts" are defined as movies and rock music. Opening nights are covered. There are occasions when the paper sees the importance of covering second casts. But it's not of general interest.

Another problem in Washingon is that the Post sees itself as a national paper, and therefore doesn't provide the "boosterism" type of coverage that a smaller ciity might give its arts organizations. It takes a lot to get a story about local artists placed in the paper -- again, the "who will care about this?" question arises.

Those are some reasons for the decline in arts coverage in one newspaper in one city. I'll be interested to read posts from readers in other cities about what's happening there. What is your arts coverage, and dance coverage, now? How has it changed in the time you've been interested in dance?