Arts in an Age of Technology

Back in the beginning of February among the theatre type blogs I listed in an entry was one to the Impact Theatre web page where they were offering free tickets to people who would see a show and blog for them.

As promised, I sent an email off to them yesterday to see how successful it was for them. I got a letter back from their graphics person, Cheshire Dave, who has given me permission to excerpt the email here. Apparently, as much as people seem to want to regale the blogosphere with the inane details of their lives, no one wants to write about theatre–even with a direct appeal.

Quoth Cheshire:

I am depressed to announce that yours is the very first email I’ve gotten from that link in the six months or so that it’s been up. No joke; no exaggeration. By and large, this initiative has been a spectacular failure. Except for one case, no blogger has taken me up on it, even ones I solicited directly (some of them didn’t even get back to me, and I emailed several times). The sole exception has been SFist (http://www.sfist.com), and that’s a site that I write for (I’m not the one doing the reviews). But the point of SFist is to fill a need for a regional blog, so it’s not like an individual’s blog in that regard. So really, my plan has been totally unsuccessful.

It kills me that I can’t find even one blogger who wants free tickets to theater that he or she would probably really enjoy. With bloggers more or less looked down upon by a great portion of the print establishment and not known about by even more people, it seems to me that what bloggers want is legitimacy. But when offered to them on a silver platter, they can’t be bothered. It’s really disappointing.

I did go to sfist.com and typed “Impact” into the search field to see what sorta stuff was going up. There were some nice articles for their productions with the sort of disclaimers about being involved with Impact Theatre that you would hope people being paid to promote governmental initiatives would make. Its a practice to which all uncredentialed journalist types should aspire. (I try to keep the blog generally apolitical, but sometimes, the opportunity to comment is just there.)

I sent him a couple links to some of my “bloggers as the next reviewers” entries (here, here, and here) in my inquiry email. He noted though that “One thing I didn’t see in your entry about bloggers as reviewers that is a benefit to the arts organization is the opportunity for almost-instant response on the blog.”

I thought I had said that somewhere already, but it certainly bears repeating. As he noted, his theatre gets most of its review driven audiences from the free weekly paper so by the time the review appears, the show is in to its second week. With the daily papers, you are sort of at the whims of the editors. A Sunday or Friday review is great–but god help you if it appears in Monday’s paper as it is the least read of any day.

Since bloggers are typically very quick to report their impressions, finding a good one with a dedicated readership can potentially be worth his/her weight in gold–so a couple free tickets to a show ain’t nothin’ But as I noted a couple days ago, I think blogging still has to have some time to mature as a information media. Once it does, I bet you see individuals with sites like sfist.com that appear well run and probably have a dedicated group of visitors.

Until then though, I encourage everyone to be like Impact and pioneer the way.

In case you missed seeing it on Artsjournal today because it was a holiday for you, an article appeared from Wired suggesting that the future prosperity of the US lay in right brain activities.

The author foresees that as more left brain logic based jobs either get off shored or relegated to increasingly sophicated software, a demand for people with intuitive and empathic skills will emerge.

There was an interesting section that might mean good things for the arts organizations able to fulfill an apparently emerging need people are beginning to feel-

For companies and entrepreneurs, it’s no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that’s reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you’re like a few million Americans, you’ve got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it’s commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business – for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country’s more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life.

This may present an interesting turn of events. I have been reading articles of late that talk about people skipping college or going into technical training to gain specific skills. While it is certainly true that colleges could do a better job at endowing their graduate with practical skills, if this Wired artice is correct, it may be time to shift one’s concentration back to liberal and fine arts degrees to gain marketable skills.

If you read reports on why people are no longer attending arts events, inevitably television, video games and computers will be mentioned.

What isn’t mentioned is that there is sort of a conservation of creative energy going on over the internet. Even though people are online more, there is a creative itch that they seem to need to scratch. Take for example the MUD Achaea (FAQ on MUDS here). They are a text based mud meaning no graphics are provided over the screen–all the colors, textures, etc are created within the player’s mind from the description presented.

However, for the past 5-6 years they have held monthly artisianal and bardic contests where players create visual representations of life in this text based game or songs/stories/poems reflecting the same. Considering that they also award runners up and merit awards, that is a fair bit of art being created to give tribute to an imaginary world.

Even more–they have a sophicated mechanism that allows players to create their own plays in game on a stage in one of the towns. It even goes so far as to allow you to set ticket prices, reserve private boxes, build sets and costumes and employ special effects.

This can give some hints as to the direction technology and theatre may be headed together.

Using MUDs for something other than entertainment has long been contemplated as seen in this paper on their use in education written a decade ago.

And the theatre world has been using a form of MUDs called MOOs to hold meeting and forum for almost as long. The Association of Theatre in Higher Education created ATHE MOO to provide opportunities for discussion and debate to those who couldn’t attend their annual conferences.

So I was checking my visitor stats for January. The report only shows the IP addresses of people who visited, but it does give me links to websites through which people clicked through to find me.

Turns out that people have been linking to me via the blogs maintained by a paid arts blogger, I reported on in an earlier post. The blog entries in question come from Worker Bees Blog and 42nd St. Moon.

In the former blog, she talks about the importance of monitoring your statistics and how she can now track my blog and my references to her. I imagine we will now do a humorous little turn at watching each other watch each other.

In the latter entry, she mentions how 42nd St Moon is becoming powerful at leveraging blogs. This is quite true because by visiting that entry, I then clicked through to the other related blogs, one of which is focussed on the benefit of technology to arts organizations.

Given that this whole series of events was predicated on my search for other arts blogs beyond artsjournal.com, I am starting to look at my whole effort at blogging as something of a success which is gaining momentum.

Since the December holiday season I have gotten email from people whose nieces have turned them on to my blog and from an administrator at the National Dance Project because someone brought my comments to their attention.

Makes me realize that there are a lot more people intentionally visiting the website than I realized. The web stats report tells you what keywords people used in search engines to find your website. My only comment is to look at the first word in my blog’s name. I will let you infer some of the bizarre search terms people are using from that.

I was visiting the Knight Foundation website and came across the aforementioned article, “Smart Concerts: Orchestras in the Age of Edutainment” by Alan Brown.

It offers some interesting reading about the tension between offering classical music in a manner that is appealing to new audiences while adhering to the expectations of long time audiences. (Of course the lessons learned are applicable to all the arts.) The former doesn’t attend often, but constitutes the future of your organization. The latter frequently attend, donate much needed monies in the face of declining foundation support and sit on your board. All of which can make it difficult to innovate.

Brown gives a number of examples of innovations that orchestras are using, including Concert Companion with which readers of Greg Sandow’s blog may be familiar.

He also recounts the resistance that some of these programs have faced, including booing at the Minnesota Orchestra.

A little more about that in a bit.

Brown makes some familiar observations about arts attendance. One thing he notes is that consumers want a more intense experience in a shorter time because they have less time. Thus the prevalence of extreme sports and standing ovations. People want to feel that they have had a good time in the time they had.

Another observation is that while technology makes so many more musical options available to people with the ability to download opera as easily as the latest pop single, it also allows people to continue to reinforce their own tastes by providing them with so much material, they never get tired of listening and experiment with other options.

One section I found particularly interesting:

In his book “Who Needs Classical Music?,” Julian Johnson argues that classical music, fundamentally, is discursive in nature and requires careful and complete listening in order to be fully appreciated. Instead, he says, most consumers ‘use’ (or misuse) classical music to alter or underscore their mood, or just to fill empty time.2 Mass culture’s appropriation of classical music may be good or bad, depending on your point of view, but there is a larger idea here. Much of music’s allure derives from the relative ease with which it can be selected and programmed by the listener. In focus groups, music lovers describe how they listen to one kind of music for vacuuming, another kind of music for cooking, another kind of music for exercising, and so forth. Consumers understand what it means to be your own curator, and derive great satisfaction from arranging art around them to the satisfaction of their own aesthetic – especially music and visual art.

I really appreciate Julian Johnson’s views. The last artistic director I worked for wouldn’t recommend musicians to people who wanted live background music at parties and receptions. His feeling was that a musician works too hard at his/her craft to be ignored and spoken over. And it reinforces the idea that their product is worthless and disposable. He felt that it was better to get a good CD player and sound system.

I also like the idea though that consumers know the value of being their own curator. I am not quite sure how to execute it, but I sense there would be great value to an arts organization in a program that validated this sentiment and empowered patrons in some manner.

The four tactics that Brown says are being employed by orchestras are: contextual programming, dramatization of music, visual enhancements and embedded interpretation. Of these, I would imagine that dramatization and visual enhancement might be considered most sacreligious by long time concert goers.

Dramatization is “theatrically produced in service of a larger concept or purpose using some combination of narration, drama, dance, scenery, lighting and video. But the music remains the main attraction.

Visual enhancement, which he describes as the most controversial, “…can be divided into two categories: visual enhancements that add an artistic element to the concert, and visual enhancements that (literally) magnify the performers. It is not unusual for orchestras to introduce visual elements such as banners, flags, projections and ambient lighting to the stage, sometimes in service of a theme or special occasion.”

Since these programs try to “sex” the music up by adding new elements rather than allowing the music to stand on its own merits, I can understand why people might be upset.

Contextual programming he defines as “contextual programming as the practice of selecting programs, series and even whole seasons around unifying ideas – topics, themes, genres, idioms, artists and other constructs – however focused or oblique. Contextual programs have more conceptual glue holding them together.”

One thing he points out is that unless you are a long time attendee or a musician, you might be hard pressed to understand why a particular mix of music from different composers was chosen for performance. (Lord knows, I have always wondered) Contextual programming offers some sort of narrative that explains this. As noted, it could also be oriented to a theme like The San Diego Symphony’s Light Bulb Series program, “Can Classical Music Be Funny?” (Lord knows I have wondered that as well.)

Embedded Interpretation encompasses elements which are part of the performance itself, such as the Minnesota Orchestra where the conductor provided some explanation about why the pieces were put together (many loved it, some booed) and the Philadelphia Orchestra where the musicians share insights about music during their summer programs. Of course, there is also the Concert Companion which provides commentary synchronized to the music broadcast to a handheld PDA.

The whole article is worth reading because I only touch on some of the examples given and I think many of them can inspire programs for other organizations.

I talk a lot about the power of blogs for theatre, but other than the ones at artsjournal.com, I haven’t seen too many.

Well, thanks to the power of google, I found a handful. The first I found was an entry appropriately entitled “Where Are The Theatre Blogs?” People who made comments to the entry actually pointed out a few to look at which was lucky because I never saw them listed on Google.

One of the best examples of what I championed in earlier entries about artists blogging about the process they go through can be found on my London life. The blog is currently following Paul Miller, a London based director (and author) who is in the process of directing a play in Japan. He has been blogging since August and has been really regular in his writing about his process and artistic experiences. Clicking back to November, one finds he had flown out then to cast the show, flew back to the UK and then back to Japan in January to direct. Guy has to be exhausted!

One of the most surprising links I came across was a story on Elisa Camahort who is not only a professional blogger–paid to blog for a company–but she is being paid to blog for 3 theatre companies in the San Francisco Bay Area! I haven’t really read the different blogs in their entireity. The recent focus seems to be on news about the theatres’ current and upcoming seasons and theories about acting, marketing, etc. I will be reading a bit more as I have time. (One of the best things about writing a blog–you can follow your own links to do additional research!)

I also found a person with a blog connected to Shakespeare Magazine. The blog covers stories about Shakespeare productions and projects in the US and UK. It also lists stories about the Bard himself, including recent articles about the writer having syphilis (and stories refuting that theory)

There are some interesting discussions about art coming from Canadian sources as well on a website called The Flying Monkey. While the author admits that the discussion is dying down (though there is apparently more occuring on a message board), what was really interesting is the stated purpose of the blog–“An online discussion, from the point of view of the performing arts, about the audience: who they are, what they want and what we can give them. Excerpts from this discussion will be reprinted in Ruby Slippers Theatre’s annual publication, The Flying Monkey, at the discretion of Guest Editor Adrienne Wong.”
(06/09- The old blog is gone, replaced by a new one which does not have any of the old conversations.)

I thought it was really interesting that they would include the discussion in a print publication as well. As many people as there are reading blogs, etc online, it is good to remember that there are a lot of passionate supporters out there who aren’t online and they deserve to be included in the dialogue in some fashion from time to time.

Last theatre blog I wanted to direct folks to is not for live performance, but actually a movie theatre. Some intrepid folks apparently quit their high paying corporate jobs right around Christmas and moved to Springfield, MO to renovate and open a small movie house. They basically discuss every step of the project from applying to get a Small Business Administration loan to deciding how what type of soda to serve and the size seats to put in the theatre. (You want a lesson in economics, check out the Jan 8 entry –unfortunately they don’t have a way to link directly to the entry)

I just came across a PBS program I was briefly introduced to when I was interviewing around for my current job. Art:21 Art in the 21st Century is a PBS program that, as you might imagine, looks at art in the 21st century.

I have actually not seen the program. Unfortunately, as Drew McManus learned in regard to the Keeping Score program featuring the San Francisco Symphony, the program doesn’t get much air time. It seems like another of those great gems that gets hidden under a rock.

The website however does have a lot of resources and allows you to see snippets of the programs. It offers lesson plans and other educational resources for teachers. It also presents student art projects that were created in conjuction with the program themes.

This is sort of a nice guide for teachers I think because it gives concrete examples of projects that have emerged from the lesson plans PBS provided. Even if the lesson plans were generated after the fact by the teachers who lead classes to create the projects, I know that teachers often like to have concrete examples to go along with their lesson plans. It is interesting to see the directions different schools went with different projects.

Although PBS doesn’t play the show that often, the website does offer the opportunity for people to have screenings and residencies and even provides materials to publicize the event. If an organization is interested, they can use these materials to support/complement projects of their own.

I know, I know, I have been neglecting my blog of late. However, there is very good news on the job front which I have had to begin preparing for. I haven’t received a contract/letter of appointment yet and I am superstitious about posting the news until I actually have it in hand. (On the other hand, I have started moving arrangements very much in earnest.)

But I wanted to keep up my practice of giving good advice by directing readers to an Inc magazine article on cheap ways to get yourself noticed on the internet. The article talks about making sure your company is listed intelligently on search engines.

If you are thinking that people can easily find you on the internet by checking out the entertainment section of the local newspaper’s website, remember that I mentioned a couple months ago that people are turning to newspapers less and less frequently for information. They might be looking at the online newspaper site, but don’t count on it.

Your best bet according to the article can be to make sure the keyword section of your webpage includes the right words and phrases that identify your organization, but also that shows where you are geographically. If someone who recently moved to town types “Entertainment St. Paul, MN” you want to make sure you are listed in that search.

The article also mentions how you can get your organization to appear toward the top of the results list without too much effort.

This is what arts organizations are looking for–cheap, quick, easy way to gain exposure so read it and implement it!

A while back I noted an article that discussed the fact that while newspaper circulation is down on the whole, ethnic newspaper circulation is experiencing growth.

According to another recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the same is true of magazines and journals. Magazines focussed on to very narrow audiences, (people trying to get pregnant, people who like hybrid cars and living like tycoon Donald Trump are among those mentioned), are beginning to appear more and more often.

As I mentioned in a number of earlier entries, this type of thing makes it very difficult for organizations with limited budgets and a mission to reach a wide portion of the audience. If people are getting their news and information solely from a few sources with limited circulations, it makes it increasingly difficult and expensive to communicate with a fairly large number of people. (Of course, it being able to promote directly to people who fancy themselves tycoons can be useful.)

This is probably one of those cases where reality runs counter to expectations. The advent of email was heralded as the beginning of the paperless revolution, instead paper consumption went up. Now where the internet might be expected to be cutting costs since you can email instead of snail mail brochures and information to patrons, it has created the expectation that one can access information specially prepared and filtered for one’s own interests and view of the world. So now those “savings” have to be employed to put your information in a thousand places instead of a handful.

Don’t you just love progress?

Last month I made an entry about the Seattle theatre On the Board’s use of blogs to present attendee’s reviews of the shows. I had been disappointed by the fact that an administrator from the theatre was acting as a gatekeeper and approving the entries.

I came across a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article via Artsjournal.com today that discusses the blog project in a bit more depth. I accept that they felt the post approval process was necessary to avoid language and personal attacks. I have read some internet forums where the conversation left the topic and devolved into such attacks. I have also been a member of forums where people were very civil and the worst attacks were teasing about someone’s love of Kit-kats. I think it insults the audience to assume that things are going to go badly from the outset.

I have purposely left the comments portion of this blog open for that very reason. If anyone wants to post something, good or bad, they are free to. This is not to say I don’t keep an eye on what is said and edit it. To this point, I have only removed ads for penis enhancement. I may edit derogatory language in the future, but I prefer to leave things open at all times. I believe that the power of this medium lies in the fact that someone can say something incredibly critical of someone and there is an opportunity for someone else to see it or Google to archive it before it gets deleted.

This has happened recently with the federal government before they took steps to avoid having their pages archived. Departments shifted their officially stated policy and tried to make their webpages seem like it was always that policy until someone dug up the archived copy that showed it wasn’t so.

Because it is so easy to make changes to electronically presented material, the “truth” become violatile and transient. Even if it reflects negatively on me, I think it is important that there exists an opportunity for my critics to discover what it was I deleted in anger.

My philosophy of the blogosphere notwithstanding, I did find a couple of things On the Boards is doing to be interesting. The fact they are not just letting audiences know the opportunity to blog exists, but rather are inviting specific people to review them is great. (Though they undermine their position of openness credibility by reserving the right to edit.) Despite the fact many people seem to have no problem expressing their opinion online, there are still many folks who have strong views and don’t comment. (Hint hint all ye readers of my blog.) Picking people to write gets the ball rolling and insures at least their friends will visit the site to read what they had to say.

It is no surprise what other parts of the article I found interesting–it was the sections that confirmed my vision of what blogging can bring to arts organizations.

“Because OTB performances typically run either three or four nights and daily newspapers no longer review theatrical events overnight, people who wait for a critical heads-up before deciding to buy a ticket have a single night to do so, at most two. By that time, if it’s a hot performance, tickets are gone.

Imagine for a moment that newspaper reviews were plentiful, timely and unfailingly expert. They would still be one-way streets. Critics expound. Readers moved to reply have to write the critic for a response or write the editor to see their letter in print, and by that time the performance has concluded its run.

OTB bloggers begin typing after the curtain closes, posting their reviews opening night. Readers respond and presto: OTB has a real dialogue on its hands.”

and a little further on:

“What a gift, especially if you happen to hang out with dullards. You love them, but they’re more likely to sprout wings than be able to discuss the aesthetics of Shaw on stage. Now you can kiss your dullard goodnight and log onto the intellectual action. “

I especially liked this last bit because I had never thought about it before. It isn’t world shattering and a bit humorous, but it does take the pressure off a friend/significant other who attends with an avid arts lover to provide an intelligent discourse on what they just saw. Husbands already feel they have done enough by staying awake through the ballet but to have to talk about it afterward! That is the straw that breaks the camel’s back! Now they can be judged a good spouse for tolerating a night at the ballet because there is a ready made community in which the wife can debate the finer points ad infinitum.

Of course, as an arts administrator, my goal would be to find a way for the husband to enjoy himself as well. For those who are interested in the arts but are intimidated, the blogging and discussion forums can be as valuable a resource as it is for the aficionado. People’s true identities are protected by the nicknames they assume so the novice attendee can feel comfortable asking elementary questions without fear of being identified in the lobby as the stupid one. Or they can simply lurk in order to read and learn from what other folks have to say.

Dang, I really need to get employed soon. I am just dying to start to put some of these ideas to use!

Comments anyone?

Some positive movements lately on the job search front kept me from posting yesterday. We will see what develops.

I came across an essay by John Eger titled “The Future of Work in the Creative Age.” It sort of added another piece to the puzzle of how to attain Richard Florida’s creative communities. In a time where outsourcing fears cause anxiety about one’s job future, Eger says the US should focus its efforts on cultivating creativity.

Many, like the Nomura Research Institute, argue that the stage is set for the advance of the “Creative Age,” a period in which America should once again thrive and prosper because of our tolerance for dissent, respect for individual enterprise, freedom of expression and recognition that innovation is the driving force for the U.S. economy, not mass production of low value goods and services.

Today, the demand for creativity has outpaced our nation’s ability to create enough workers simply to meet our needs. Seven years ago, for example, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers asked the governor of California to “declare a state of emergency” to help Hollywood find digital artists. There were people aplenty who were computer literate, they claimed, but could not draw. In the New Economy, they argued, such talents are vital to all industries dependent on the marriage of computers and telecommunications.

He goes on to mention a couple schools which are rearranging their cirriculum to integrate an arts focus. He also quotes HP CEO Carly Fiorina as saying soon pools of skilled creatives will replace tax incentives and infrastructure as the elements which entice industry to a locality.

He suggests that divorcing the arts from math and science of the last couple decades has actually been detrimental to America’s ability to compete in these areas. He points out that Einstein played violin, Galileo wrote poetry and Samuel Morse painted portraits. They may not have had the time and talent to become virtuosos in these pursuits, but the implication is that they supplemented the quality of the scientific products of these men.

Unfortunately, the subtle influence of arts upon scientific accomplishment and vice versa is one of those areas that resists precise measurement by standardized testing and other empirical measures. Only after a sustained shift in policy are we likely to realize the benefits of a more holistic education and exposure.

I was reading Adaptstration today in which Drew McManus was talking about seeing an orchestra program which was specially designed to show off the technological advantages of HDTV. It reminded me of another article I read back in February where students from MIT were dreaming up ways that technology could enhance an arts attendance experience. One of their ideas was to project a hologram of a conductor in Germany in front of an orchestra in Miami and have them make music with half the world between them.

When I originally read that article in February, it reminded me of some musings I had years before on the future of theatre. With the trend of people deciding to receive their entertainment at home, theatres would have to adapt by presenting their product across the same delivery channels. Arts on television currently doesn’t have much of an audience. However, I was thinking that an emerging holograph or virtual reality technology could provide the answer.

My wild idea was that people could choose to plug in to watch a live performance from home. However, they could not only choose to watch from an audience’s point of view, but also from the point of view of each character via a small camera mounted over the ear like a body mic. In this manner, they could experience what it was like to be up on stage in front of an audience, what it was like waiting in the wings or rushing around to enter from the other side of the stage. Some costume changes might have to be censored out depending how much they revealed.

There would be, of course, the added thrill of taking the point of view of one of the actors who about to be kissed by the celebrity sex symbol so that you feel you are being kissed yourself.

This is the advantage of live creative arts over film. Movies might be able to provide people with the point of view of being in the actual movie. But because films are shot out of order and there are long periods of inactivity for those involved, they can’t provide real time behind the scenes insights and interaction.

When I first envisioned this idea, I figured technology might make it viable by the time I was 70. However, it appears the bright minds are moving ahead faster than I gave them credit for. Be interesting to see how soon it is a reality.

Last month I did an entry on Bloggers as the New Arts Critics. This past weekend, Terry Teachout touched upon the same subject in an interview on Studio 360. (The whole interview is very interesting, but for the portion pertinent to this entry, click the forward button on your media player twice to the third segment and move the progress button to about 5:15)

During the interview, Mr. Teachout mentions that he writes so prolifically for his blog in addition to providing reviews and commentary for print journals and authoring books (a fact noted in a recent Washington Post article) because contributing to a new medium and interacting with his readers is so exciting and engaging. He goes on to talk about how he sees serious arts coverage naturally migrating to the web as less time is devoted to coverage in papers and television. He is confident that good bloggers will gain credibility and influence. He says of blogs, “They empower the amateur. Anybody can write one. And whether you have any credentials or not, if it is any good, believe me, it will get noticed.”

He was then asked if more amateurs blogging necessarily meant there would be more talented people in the world rather than just a lot of people churning out a lot of mediocre stuff. Teachout mentioned he now interacts with many very talented people who he had never heard of prior to coming across their blogs. These people don’t have access to the traditional media channels through which to make their reputation but are doing so on the web.

The interviewer also brought up the point that the ease of self-publishing on the web circumvents the reflection and review process that one goes through before submitting work for print publication and removes the outside point of view of an editor. Teachout responds by pointing out that it is also easy (and widely lauded by the online community) to go back and insert an update or retraction in an entry saying you were wrong in your initial assessment.

He did feel that the way Amazon has set up their review process was not conducive to the rendering of honest, quality reviews. He does mention that he can find some really excellent writing among the other reviews, mostly from people who are amateur experts with a passion for the subject matter.

I find this whole conversation on the future of blogging very exciting and intriguing. I had a brief email discussion on this matter with Adaptistration writer, Drew McManus. He pointed out that another article I linked to about publishers sending free books to top Amazon reviewers didn’t address the issue of payola for a favorable reviews. I had mentioned this as a possible dark side of blogging reviewers in my blogger as new reviewer entry. As I said then, how do you guard against it? If you are getting paid nothing and working hard to produce quality work, it is easy to favor those who provide you with even modest considerations.

The obvious answer is for today’s noted bloggers to come up with a policy of behavior that will establish a precedent while blogging with the intent to influence is still young. The problem is that there is no recognized source of authority (and isn’t lack of a dictating force part of blogging’s allure?) for people to organize around. Drew McManus’ opinion is that it will be another decade before companies find a way to make the process profitable for the writers. What happens in the interim? He points to the fact people choose news channels most closely aligned with their own views as a harbinger of the end to an effort of objective reporting.

While the idea that one may soon be able to go through life without having their world view challenged is rather frightening, the silver lining would be more writers would find employment satisfying the demand for niche writing. (I can even imagine someone becoming fabulously wealthy providing material that reinforced opposing views.)

As Terry Teachout said–interesting times and technology to be contributing to and taking part in. Of course there is a reason why the sentiment “May you live in interesting times” is considered a curse by the Chinese.

Since I am getting some positive support and feedback for my blog, I have thought that mentioning it on my resume might be beneficial in my job search. However, I have no idea where an appropriate place might be to position the information. To that end, I contacted Anne Fisher who writes a job advice column for Fortune.

I wrote the following:

Dear Annie-

I am unemployed and in order to keep my skills sharp and synthesize my ideas about management in my particular field, I have been writing them down in a web log. I have received some compliments on the quality of my writing and research from some objective writers and managers in the field. I am thinking about referring to my blog on my resume and wonder what the etiquette and rules might be. Since blogging is such a new (but potentially influential), method of publishing and communication this isn’t something covered in the usual resume guidebooks.

I am not sure where to place a reference to my work either. Since it isn’t a volunteer or employment position, I don’t want to include it in that section. But I also want to show off my skills and innovation because it will set me apart from other applicants so don’t want to list it at the end of my resume near my applicable software skills.

My final concern is that like any quasi-journalistic endeavor, some days I am more profound than others. I want to present my magnificence, but I will never know when a potential employer will view my site and the first entry they see may not be the work of genius the previous entry was. From my point of view, it is still worth it for an employer to see a good entry rather than a fabulous one, but I wonder if there are variables I am not considering.

Any advice?

To which she responded by email:

This is a really interesting question (and one that, as you note, is on the “cutting edge”, so no real protocol exists for it — yet!). You know what I’d do? List the blog address on your resume at the top, right under your contact info, but set apart by a line or two so it stands out. It might just catch someone’s eye. You can’t stop them from going online and perusing your less-brilliant stuff (hey, I can’t stop that either!), but this is something that may intrigue just the sort of interviewer you *want* to be hired by: Up to date, open to new ideas, respectful of individual initiative. But also, I’d like to get an expert opinion — assuming I can find one, on so new a thing…! 😉 Thanks! A.

I will update the blog if she does find someone who feels confident in giving an expert opinion.

It occurs to me that this may become a new trend in the employment process. Not everyone will create a blog on a topic of interest to their industry, of course. However, people may be quoted in articles or have published papers that appear online and will want to make potential employers aware that the information is available. Rather than write out long, hard to accurately type URL addresses on their resumes, candidates can provide a simple web address that contains links to the relevant articles.

If anyone has some thoughts, I would be interested in hearing them. Either click on the comment line at the end of this entry or click on my name to email me. I would especially be interested in knowing if anyone outside of internet, graphic design and publishing industries are placing web addresses to their work on resumes and in what industries is this happening.

Yesterday I mentioned the idea that with the reduction of staff and space devoted to the arts in newspapers, bloggers might become the new performance critics. In preparation for holding forth on this idea, I wanted to see if anyone had written on the issue of bloggers and online journals replacing newspapers as information sources.

Some Context

As luck would have it, I came across an excellent article called Blogosphere: the Emerging Media Ecosystem: How Weblogs and Journalists work together to Report, Filter and Break the News . In this and three ancillary articles, (Are Bloggers Journalists?, Borg Journalism, and More on Blogging and Journalism) the author, John Hiler, really does an excellent job discussing how bloggers and journalists differ and how their existences are interrelated.

Among some of the points he made were: “Mainstream” Journalists don’t regard bloggers as journalists because of the subjectivity of their work. Bloggers don’t make any claim to objectivity and regard journalists as hypocrites for claiming they are. Most bloggers feel journalists have their own agenda, don’t adhere to their own code of ethics, and are frequently inaccurate in their reporting.

Some of the strengths and weakness of blogs that Mr. Hiler mentions are: They are good at realizing the implications of points and extending them to their logical conclusions; they are good at debunking stories, but not good at summarizing or correcting errors; there is a built in peer-review system.

To quickly explain-The first point is very encouraging to me since my whole purpose in writing this blog is to study the implications of things I have read on the arts. The second point, Hiler illustrates with some examples of how bloggers have quickly exposed money making scams where people make pleas for money and sympathy for their debilitating diseases. However, he also cites examples of bloggers mischaracterizing what people have said while summarizing articles. (The irony that I might be mischaracterizing him by summarizing his ideas is not lost on me.) He also gives examples of people linking to and citing controversial information like mad, but not doing the same when a correction was made the next day.

The last point about peer review is related to the debunking issue. One of the reasons journalists minimize the value of blogs is because there is no editor present to keep bloggers on course and reined in. However, Hiler cites examples of tens to thousands of bloggers contacting writers to point out errors.

Blogger as the New Arts Critic

Having read all this, I have a better idea of how a blogger could operate as an arts critic. What I envision happening to a lesser or greater extent is a paper really cutting back on coverage and an arts organization gradually becoming aware of people who are writing about their attendance experience. The arts organization contacts the people who write best and probably least critically of them and extend free tickets to them as they do the newspaper critic. (Though many newspaper critics do pay for their tickets) Then the arts organization begins quoting the reviews and directing people to that writer’s website.

There are, of course, benefits and pitfalls to this situation. First of all, the person doing the writing has to be seen as credible. They must write well, have a fair bit of expertise in the subject (rather than having taken an appreciation course in college), and certainly has to have a very limited conflict of interest (perhaps is a long time subscriber, but not on the board or a relative of staff).

Many newspaper critics are mindful of a code of ethics and will avoid any appearance of impropriety such as accepting benefits that the general public don’t receive. An individual who hasn’t been exposed to journalistic training might find themselves on a slippery slope of favor currying if they aren’t careful about what they accept.

Another thing that might detract from a blogging reviewer’s credibility might be the narrow scope of their experience and venue attendance. If the writer only attends one arts organization and has done so for the 15 years, they can only talk about how good the shows are in relation to past shows at the same venue. In the best of worlds, the reviewer would begin to receive invitations to ply their craft at other venues out of recognition of their excellent writing. There is a chance though that organizations will cultivate “pet” reviewers who are sympathetic to them alone.

On the other hand, audiences often crossover to different venues and can create a demand for reviews by the person whose opinion is most aligned with their own. This is where the strength of blogs comes into play. I had cited and article in an earlier entry that talked about how blogs are places where opinion leaders can state their thoughts and people can easily access them. It is the same in this case. If people come to respect a reviewer, a demand to have them review in many places can arise. Also, people who don’t agree with a review have the opportunity to post a review of their own possibly making them an opinion leader for another segment of an audience who shares their tastes. People also have the opportunity to write to the critic and support or disagree with what was written. This may keep the writer honest or it may make them conform to the loudest opinions to keep the hate mail away. Certainly, the blog writer has to have the thick skin of his/her newspaper counterparts.

The biggest danger could be that good writers might find themselves in trouble if a demand for their skilled services takes them away from their family and jeopardizes their positions at their day jobs. They may have a little more leeway than the newspaper reporter who often rushes from curtain call to make a deadline. However, there is certain to be some pressure by arts organizations and readers alike to produce a review quickly so decisions to attend can be made and tickets sold for the most days remaining in a run. Businesses may not look kindly upon their engineers and managers using work time to write reviews.

It certainly isn’t viable for organizations to pay for the reviewers’ time since those with the most money can get more frequent and perhaps better exposure. The solution, ironically might be to have a centralized organization/clearinghouse which insures the quality of writing and then assigns writers to shows on a rotating, as available basis. Hmm, this sounds like a newspaper! Truthfully, since it is doing little more than calling up a pool of reviewers, the clearinghouse could be the local arts council. The clearinghouse could charge a nominal fee to the participating organizations and host a centralized website where the reviews appeared so audiences didn’t have to hunt down the sites of the different reviewers. (Or the central website could link people to those individual’s review sites.)

The upside is that an organization gets well written reviews and stories. The writers aren’t called upon so frequently that they don’t feel the effort they are expending for free exceeds the value of the ticket and experience they are receiving. Since the writers aren’t working for the clearinghouse merely getting a call, they retain their independence.

A huge benefit of having bloggers write about your organization is that they don’t have the space restrictions newspapers have. They can do indepth advance analyzes of every aspect of your show and do a thorough critique of the performance/exhibit. (It would be great if newspaper reviewers could note that more complete versions of their stories appeared on the newspaper website as a number of magazines do.) Since they don’t have as strong a requirement to be objective or detached from what they are viewing, a blog writer may also be more apt to discuss nuances that particularly touched them personally or present an alternative dissenting view offered by a companion or even admit they might be wrong in their view as the audience seemed to enjoy the show where they had not.

It seems to me that a well organized relationship with blogging writer can yield greater rewards than a good relationship with a newspaper writer. I would bet that some variation of what I have suggested here will eventually emerge as the dominant fashion through which people receive information about arts organizations. The players might be different, but I believe the process could be very similar.

Apropos the end of yesterday’s post, I came across an article on the web that discussed RSS feeds which is another sign of how technology is allowing people to narrow down how much of the world to which they are exposed. You may be seeing this option popping up on blogs and websites you frequent. Essentially what the feed does is send story headlines and notifies you of changes to a website.

The technology is still in its beginning steps though the article terms it as the next killer app that will change the way business is done on the web. Like the start of web browsing, you have to download viewing software though Microsoft is apparently going to integrate a viewer in its next operating system. It also feeds you news and information without ads but that is sure to change as well as the technology becomes the new channel through which people view their world (and it ain’t cheap to transmit all this feed.)

Because it is in the beginning stages, there isn’t any uniformity to the feeds. Some may be sparse text headlines with links back to a website for more information, others might give you a multimedia blast with the entire text of an article.

What does strike me though is that this is another low cost opportunity for arts organizations to get information out to audiences and develop relationships with specific people by providing information tailored specifically to their interests. You can use this format to send information about upcoming seasons, warn people about a show that is about to sell out, or even remind people they purchased tickets for that evening when they turn their computer on in the morning. Given that people are subscribing less and waiting until the last moment to purchase tickets, organizations may also end up reminding people to buy tickets at all.

Certainly this might be a solution to a lot of the problems faced by the Mondavi Center in the article I cited yesterday about shows being forgotten and lack of good seats. Favored patrons be they students, subscribers or donors could have their own special feed with advance offerings and special deals.

I will be watching this technology to see how it develops and what implications it might have for the arts.

Today I have added the text of my speech on Arts in an Age of Technology to my files section. The speech essentially covers how arts organizations need to deal with the growing expectations that technology brings.

The speech is one I gave during my visit to Wayne State University but is bereft of the little notes I had included to remind me to share an anecdote or additional examples regarding applications of my points. Though I was already pretty much speaking on the topic and using the text as a guide rather than reading it, the ad libbed anecdotes actually added about a half hour to my speech.

Readers of my blog (if there are any of you) will recognize quite a bit of material toward the end from earlier blog entries. The beginning is material I have been pondering for a couple years and have actually spoken on before. It was rather exciting to be speaking on ideas I had only just formulated a handful of days before.

Hopefully the inclusion of this speech in the Practical Applications section is a precursor of many other articles and ideas which will appear there over time (presumably not all originating with me).

Today always reminds me of my grandmother who would announce that March 4th (forth) was the most commanding day of the year. It always seemed to me to be a day ripe to be made into a holiday. Two months after the new year, it would be a good day to reaffirm your dedication to resolutions.

I spent the better part of the day refining thank you letters to the search committee at Wayne State. Taking the time to send a letter to each one of them was practicing a bit of what I preached all week. Unfortunately, I also boasted that I wrote good thank you letters while there so I had an obligation to write particularly well. It wasn’t difficult for the most part since I was grateful to different people for different things. However, I hate to be derivative of myself in my letters so I endeavored to talk about my abilities in different ways.

Now that I have returned from my interviewing, it is about time to complete this experiment in reflecting upon my experience as I had suggested in my Feb 24 entry and go back to my stated purpose of finding practical applications to theories. (Another reason to look for a new blog host–this one doesn’t have the tools to allow me to link to earlier entries)

I was happy to see an article on the Washington Post website talking about the value of reflectively blogging about your performing experience. In this case, it is about a musician who is travelling and blogging about his impressions and experience. The article mentions many of the same concerns I expressed in my entry about an organization’s rightful concern about what uncensored, unguided thoughts an employee is conveying in his blog. The entire process seems to be a success and rather pleasing to all parties involved.

Although the blogging musician, Sam Bergman, didn’t know if his efforts would be valuable to audience members, another Arts Journal blogger, Drew McManus, felt differently and invited people to give their reaction.

Since I essentially argued exactly all of this during my visit to Detroit, I really have to restrain myself from forwarding these articles to them with a big “SEE, I’M NOT CRAZY!!!!” in the subject line of an email.

Tomorrow, perhaps I will place the text of the class I taught in my good ideas section. It integrates a great deal of what I posted in my earlier entries, but also talks about things I have been mulling over for a long time.