Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Arts / Media Emily White Strikes Again
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 9:55 AM
Emily White, former editor of The Stranger and former arts and entertainment editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and now the editor of that strange glossy arts magazine City Arts, published by the people who publish the glossy programs distributed in high-end playhouses, has a piece in the new City Arts that's worth your attention. It's called "The Dumbing Down of the Dailies." It's about what happens to a city when the city's arts and culture writers lose their jobs.
It all hangs on the career of Sheila Farr, late of Seattle Times, who is fine and all, but a strange critic to pin the idea of greatness to. And it's a little embarrassing that City Arts doesn't seem to have a copyeditor. Still, White knows what she's talking about, and can really write. On the strange trade-offs of having staff critics replaced by poorly paid freelance critics: "The critic starves on $125 a review; artists and audiences, starved of comprehensive coverage, drift into separate, solipsistic twilights." White gets in a dig at newsrooms operating under "the unexamined, cultlike belief that sports coverage must be preserved." And then White calls Ann Powers, formerly of EMP, now the staff rock critic at the LA Times, who's been having nightmares of losing her job recently, and Powers goes off on a well-put example involving hamburgers:
Just to take it out of the professional realm for a moment, think of it in terms of hamburgers. Would you trust someone's opinion about a hamburger joint if you did not know what kind of food they liked or if they even ate hamburgers? Or would you go to a trusted friend who you knew ate hamburgers all the time?
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1
If that is your example of someone who can "really write"...well, I guess that explains a lot about the Stranger.
2
Not to piss anybody off, but I'm not surprised at all the the job of "professional critic" is disappearing.
3
"Yet as Farr pointed out in her Times farewell essay, U.S. museumgoers outnumber sporting-events audiences by more than six to one (850 million vs. 140 million)."
You'd have to have rocks in your head to trust an arts reporter to do statistics or really anything involving numbers larger than 10.
Needless to say I'm less interested in who (else) reported the statistic than who made it up in the first place.
Also: TV.
You'd have to have rocks in your head to trust an arts reporter to do statistics or really anything involving numbers larger than 10.
Needless to say I'm less interested in who (else) reported the statistic than who made it up in the first place.
Also: TV.
4
So... I'm listening to the NPR article & the 850 number is used without any source at all. It appears that the original source is the "American Association of Museums". Presumably 350,000 of that number are visitors to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
5
Emily White seems to have a hard time accepting a few things that I would have thought are obvious:
This phrase is what says it all: "the unexamined, cultlike belief that sports coverage must be preserved."
I'm not so sure sports coverage hasn't been cut either. I could swear I've seen more freelancer bylines on road games than before. I could be wrong. But let's just assume the following:
So why wouldn't the newspapers want to preserve sports coverage?
- * Life is unfair.
- * Civilization hangs by a tenuous thread.
- * Newspapers are a business, and a business whose business model isn't what it used to be.
This phrase is what says it all: "the unexamined, cultlike belief that sports coverage must be preserved."
I'm not so sure sports coverage hasn't been cut either. I could swear I've seen more freelancer bylines on road games than before. I could be wrong. But let's just assume the following:
- * The sports section is drivel that panders to cretins.
- * The sports section is holding up better than other sections in terms of where advertisers want their ads to attract the most eyeballs.
So why wouldn't the newspapers want to preserve sports coverage?
6
Anyway I was just reading another thread where someone points out that Slog is vicious & I agree. I take back all my comments. It's unfair and intellectually flawed to obsess on small points (sports) in a larger piece.
I'm going to go back to work where I get paid to be intellectually flawed and pointlessly obsessed.
I'm going to go back to work where I get paid to be intellectually flawed and pointlessly obsessed.
7
I like to read while I eat and my work means I usually eat at least two meals a day by myself. Newspapers lend themselves well to this, not only by their content (short articles) but their format means I can use both hands to eat. I've found that a newspaper subscription is wasteful as I don't need 7 newspapers a week, so I buy 2-3 newspapers a week from the boxes.
It's been interesting watching the transformation of the daily papers the past couple of years. I think their decline has become precipitous as the papers have gotten incredibly thin. I actually mean incredible - it's hard to believe they are this thin! I'm repeatedly shocked at how small the papers are. By cutting their news staff there are less and less articles inside, and it's getting fucking ridiculous how thin the papers are. At this point I might as well print out a couple of articles on line (from other, better sources) and save myself the 50 cents and the waste of paper that is the ads for things I will never purchase and the sections I don't have any interest in whatsoever (like sports).
In fact, that's a good idea, I think I'm going to start doing that, it's obvious the newspapers are not going to respond to their decline by adding more, better content, instead they'll continue to slash staff until they are just an AP/Reuters printout and continue to increase advertising to obnoxious levels. Aren't the Seattle Times going to waste their front page on advertising now? Fuck 'em, they dug their own graves.
It's been interesting watching the transformation of the daily papers the past couple of years. I think their decline has become precipitous as the papers have gotten incredibly thin. I actually mean incredible - it's hard to believe they are this thin! I'm repeatedly shocked at how small the papers are. By cutting their news staff there are less and less articles inside, and it's getting fucking ridiculous how thin the papers are. At this point I might as well print out a couple of articles on line (from other, better sources) and save myself the 50 cents and the waste of paper that is the ads for things I will never purchase and the sections I don't have any interest in whatsoever (like sports).
In fact, that's a good idea, I think I'm going to start doing that, it's obvious the newspapers are not going to respond to their decline by adding more, better content, instead they'll continue to slash staff until they are just an AP/Reuters printout and continue to increase advertising to obnoxious levels. Aren't the Seattle Times going to waste their front page on advertising now? Fuck 'em, they dug their own graves.
8
"White gets in a dig at newsrooms operating under "the unexamined, cultlike belief that sports coverage must be preserved."
Really though, isn't "sports welfare" at all levels of society how it thrives?
And by it thrives, I mean the industry pads its coffers with public funds.
Really though, isn't "sports welfare" at all levels of society how it thrives?
And by it thrives, I mean the industry pads its coffers with public funds.
9
I watch sports and go to museums both. I read my daily newspaper sports coverage every damn day, even though it is uniformly terrible, because one of the key features of sports is that quantifiable events take place, i.e., news. On the other hand, I NEVER EVER EVER read any of the arts coverage in the P-I; I would rather be eaten alive by fire ants. I might read it if the exhibits in the museums held daily competitive events with results, but they don't.
11
Besides Mr. Kiley and Ms. Graves I'm afraid that the rest of your editorial staff seem to have also lost their focus with regards to the arts and have been dubming down coverage. Its really too bad.
13
The cultlike devotion to sports coverage is part and parcel of our society's overt gender bias, where male-gendered activites (sports) always take precedence over gay/female gendered activities (the arts).
14
I agree with @12.
If I could subscribe to a sports-free version of a daily paper, I would.
I can get my hockey, curling, and soccer news online or via TV if need be.
If I could subscribe to a sports-free version of a daily paper, I would.
I can get my hockey, curling, and soccer news online or via TV if need be.
15
Sports are male? Tell it to Michelle Wie. The arts are gay and/or female? SURE they are. No man would be caught dead writing a book or directing or starring in a movie or painting or sculpting something. Can't think of a single one.
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