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Home , Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, The Daily News (UK), The Denver Post, The Plain Dealer

the dailies hometown press performs a juggling act

The arts, along with business and sports, is all pagination, and in each case more than half one of the three daily sections that fleshes out the that section’s arts and culture column inches hard news in Section A to turn a local devoted to the TV beat. And even that statistic into a rounded information package. All three understates the dominance of television. Because combine with columns and columns the focus of this project was on arts and culture, of lists in agate type: The sports section has the we only examined coverage of TV drama, comedy, box scores; the business section has the stock made-for-TV movies, documentaries and other listings; the arts section—variously called “The entertainment. Counting coverage of TV news Arts,” “Entertainment,” “Life,” “Living,” “Lifestyle” and TV sports, which fall outside the arts and cul- or some such—has a backbone of the daily TV ture category, would have made the overall pres- listings on which to hang its broader coverage of ence of television seem even larger. arts and culture. A newspaper’s decision about whether or not In our study of arts and culture coverage in to have a substantial daily arts section does not 15 daily in ten cities—Charlotte, necessarily reflect its overall commitment to the , , , Houston, , arts and culture beat as a whole. Even though the Philadelphia, Portland, Providence and the San arts may receive only cursory daily attention, Francisco Bay Area—during the month of some newspapers provide detailed coverage at October 1998, these daily arts sections were usu- the weekend instead. These once-a-week arts ally the small sibling of the three. There were a supplements, often distributed as a Friday few instances in which the arts section was more prominent. The and the made bigger than business, while the made it bigger than both. But on average the everyday arts sec- tion took the smallest share (7%, vs. 11% for sports and 9% for business) of the newspapers’ collective pagination. At some of the newspapers, the section is skimpy and it would be a stretch indeed to claim that it represented a serious effort at reporting on the artistic and cultural life of a community. Newspapers such as and the have daily arts sections that are little more than television-plus: They are small, averaging only 5% of the newspaper’s over-

16 REPORTING THE ARTS tabloid entertainment guide, also have a sub- offers one answer. What newspapers can unique- stantial volume of arts listings. They have very ly offer their readership may not be the journalis- little television, but comprehensive calendar tic activity of reporting on and reviewing arts information on virtually everything else. Starting and culture. Instead they offer the clerical service times for movies, live music, theater and other of compiling and displaying comprehensive local performing arts, business hours for art galleries listings. Thus their readers can experience the and museums, free activities, children’s events as artistic creations that were produced in well as participatory activities all find their home Hollywood, scheduled by television networks or in these sections. In two of them—the Cleveland published by City imprints. This cleri- Plain Dealer’s “Friday Entertainment” and the cal activity is much more amenable than regular Denver Post’s voluminous “Weekend Scene”— journalism to the improvements in efficiency and over half of the editorial space is taken up by list- productivity that modern technology affords, and ings instead of journalism. listings are perfectly suited to be converted from print to an online medium. None of the newspa- National or Local pers we studied went so far as to spend more arts If the daily arts section is dominated by tele- and culture column inches on listings than on vision, the weekend coverage of the movies takes stories—but at 49%, the up more space than any other type of artistic Providence Journal at 47% and the Houston activity. On average, one quarter of all the edito- Chronicle at 46% came very close. rial space in the weekend supplements is devot- ed to movie listings and stories. In the San Jose Mercury News that proportion was as high as 33%, and in the it was 43%. Movies, whether produced by Hollywood or independents, are almost always released nationally. Television programming consists mostly of nationally distributed network and cable fare. Add to these two the publishing industry, whose marketing of books relies on national chains, and these three media represent more than half the content of these local news- papers’ arts and culture coverage. So what distinctive advantage can the local news media claim in covering what are essential- ly national beats? The prevalence of listings

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 17 Decisions, Decisions When newspaper publishers approach the arts and culture beat, they have three sets of decisions to make. Should it be presented prima- rily in a daily section or in a once-a-week supple- ment? How should their overall editorial space be divided between stories, their journalistic product; and listings, their clerical one? And most important of all, how much prominence do they believe the arts should have? That decision concerns both presentation and substance. First, where do the arts sections stand in the overall newspaper? Construed nar- rowly, the coverage that goes under the explicit label of “the arts” extends only as far as televi- sion, movies, music, and the performing and visual arts. In Cleveland the arts are an undiluted but circumscribed beat. For example, the daily arts section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Entertainment,” is unusually segregated from a companion daily lifestyle section called “Living.” The Charlotte Observer, on the other hand, offers a daily dose of “Living”-plus-something-else, combining such subjects as theater, music and museums with food, fashion and religion. In Charlotte, arts and entertainment appear as one facet of the larger feature beat, diluted and broadly construed. The arts sections can dominate the so-called feature pages of a newspaper, organizing a sprawling array of topics that range from cultural production through the decorative arts, to topics that are outside the domain of arts and culture altogether such as food, shopping, recreation and the comics. Alternatively, the arts may occupy just one feature section among many. Besides the Cleveland Plain Dealer, newspapers as different as the and devote more than 20% of their overall pagination to non-arts feature sections. All three newspapers routinely present their coverage of architecture, fashion, design, crafts and antiques—topics we consider to be a proper province of arts and culture journalism—outside their designated arts sections. The Miami Herald even puts publishing outside the arts and culture context, presenting its book reviews as part of its “Week in Review” section. Second, the publisher must decide what resources to devote to covering arts and culture stories—listings aside—no matter which section format the newspaper happens to adopt. Our study compared an array of daily newspapers, those in large markets and small, local and national, in single-paper markets and those with competitors. Devoting more than 8,000 column

18 REPORTING THE ARTS inches to arts and culture stories in a month rep- tion of the national edition’s pagination, its daily resents an enormous commitment for a small- arts section was larger than sports—although city newspaper like . The readers business was bigger still. Neither were those of the Houston Chronicle, who got to read an other two factors at work, which in other news- equivalent volume of journalism, were benefici- papers can lead to an inflated daily arts section. aries of a much less impressive proportion of that The arts had not expanded at the expense of monumental publication’s efforts. Similarly, other feature sections—which accounted for an fewer than 9,000 column inches a month writ- unusually high 23% of the overall pagination—or ten in the snappier style demanded by a tabloid at the expense of the weekend supplements. such as the Chicago Sun-Times, may represent no less a commitment than the New York, New York Chicago Tribune’s 11,000. New York City’s role as the national center for three major cultural sectors—book publishing, Big City Beat Broadway theater and the visual arts—was Volume and proportion—a newspaper with reflected in ’ arts and culture coverage. an extensive commitment to coverage of arts and Obviously, because of the sheer volume of col- culture must deliver both, not only the gross umn inches that the Times lavishes on the arts, it number of column inches, but also a large pro- writes more than other newspapers about every portion of its pagination to a combination of the sector. But the prominence it afforded books and daily and the weekly arts sections. Both things the performing arts was unusual even in percent- considered, this study found that extensive arts age terms. Mostly because of its Sunday “Book and culture journalism is the province of big city Review,” almost one quarter of the space the dailies. The Chicago Tribune provided the most Times devotes to arts and culture journalism is column inches. The Philadelphia Inquirer, the about books. Among local newspapers, only the Chicago Sun-Times and the two San Francisco Miami Herald, the Rocky Mountain News and papers (who co-produce their Sunday edition so the Charlotte Observer exceeded 20%. The per- its huge weekend “Datebook” supplement goes to forming arts, mostly theater and dance, ranked both sets of readers and is counted twice in this as the Times’ third most important area (18% of study) devoted the largest share of their pagina- coverage vs. 19% for movies, 24% for books) of tion to arts sections. Conversely, the papers with cultural production. Only the Oakland Tribune the smallest volume of coverage were the gave performance more than 15% of its space Charlotte Observer, the Providence Journal and among the local newspapers. the Oakland Tribune and those with the smallest By contrast, television, that staple of daily proportion of space were the Providence Journal arts and culture journalism, gets short shrift at and the Denver Post. the Times even though the networks are based in The notion that arts and culture is a big city the Big Apple. Only relatively speaking, of beat is confirmed by the avalanche of coverage course—because of the sheer size of its arts sec- provided by the national edition of The New York tions, the Times actually has more TV column Times. Its sheer volume of column inches (list- inches than every local newspaper in our study ings excluded)—over 19,000 in a single month— except for the listings-heavy Houston Chronicle almost matched the arts and culture coverage of and the Philadelphia Inquirer. But with televi- the second city’s two dailies, the Tribune and the sion representing only 5% of all arts and culture Sun-Times, combined. In contrast, the monthly stories, the Times is the only newspaper that average for all 15 metropolitan dailies in our devotes less space to television than to the visual study was just over 8,000 column inches. arts of painting, sculpture and photography. Listings accounted for an unusually small 27% of For national coverage of television, USA the total space the Times devoted to the arts Today is a specialist. Overall, it has less than one (compared with a 40% average for the 15 local quarter of the Times’ volume of arts and culture newspapers) confirming the fact that the provi- coverage, but its daily arts section takes up a sion of listings is a local, not national, specialty. larger proportion of the newspaper’s overall pagi- Was the explanation for this high volume nation than the Times’ does (13% vs. 10%) and that the Times covers everything in greater depth more than half of its daily arts and culture space than other newspapers? Or does the “Gray Lady” is devoted to stories and listings about television. have an unusually detailed commitment to the With a large daily arts section, few other feature arts? The answer is not only the former, but sections, a small weekend effort and its focus on remarkably, the latter as well. Stated as a propor- television, USA Today is configured like the

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 19 Oakland Tribune, one local newspaper in our study with a minor commitment to comprehen- sive arts and culture coverage. But even USA Today had more arts and culture coverage than the third national newspaper in our study, the Journal, whose volume of arts and culture coverage was slightly more than one- tenth of that found in . If many local newspapers are attempting to show- case the arts, along with sports and business, as regular sections to round out their daily product, the Journal, true to its Wall Street roots, pro- vides a clear-cut alternative. With 57% of its pages devoted to business, it sets aside a mere 1% to daily arts, and its sports section does not exist.

High Road or Low Road? One major mission of this study of arts and culture coverage in metropolitan daily newspa- pers was to discover whether fine arts or mass entertainment held sway. What face of the cul- tural scene did these newspapers present? Highbrow or mainstream? Commercial or not- for-profit? Elite or populist? High or low—it is a convenient dichotomy— the edifying and inspirational vs. the superficial and the entertaining. One addresses the very soul of its individual audience member. The other treats its audience as an undifferentiated demographic to be accumulated for profit. It is a convenient dichotomy, but one that this study found to be confusing in describing what a newspaper does. First, its readers’ daily artistic and cultural life is obviously a mixture of high and low elements; a newspaper would be blinding itself to that fact by taking one road or the other. Blending and mixing high art and mass culture—searching out the places where they overlap—comes more naturally to the nov- elty-seeking taste of a newspaper. In the month of our study, for example, the Charlotte Observer offered a detailed investigation of Elton John’s reworking of “Aida”; the Philadelphia Inquirer (whose beat extends to Atlantic City) examined how a fine art gallery might attract tourists to Las Vegas’ new Bellagio Hotel; and the Cleveland Plain Dealer offered an extensive review of a PBS television produc- tion of “King Lear.” Second, we found that newspapers are ill- equipped to become specialists in either the high road or the low road uniquely. Coverage of televi- sion (in daily arts sections) and movies (in week- end supplements) is a part of a newspaper’s pri- mary responsibility. Ignoring these mass media

20 REPORTING THE ARTS would be as unthinkable as ignoring the box scores in the sports section. On the other hand, these local newspapers, with massive investments in once-a-week supplements, would be equally remiss if they decided to put all their eggs in the entertainment basket. Neither their format nor their staffing equip them to compete head-to- head with those national organs whose specialty is daily coverage of the Hollywood-based, celebri- ty-oriented mass media. Instead of high and low, our results suggest other parameters for measuring a newspaper’s approach to the arts and culture beat. Is it jour- nalistic (writing articles) or clerical (providing listings)? Is it daily (news-based but ephemeral) or weekly (feature-driven but more permanent)? Is it local (a newspaper’s unique niche) or nation- in the arts sections. News about celebrities may al (artistic product made for a national audience be trivial, but it is also ephemeral. It therefore but also covered by national media)? And finally, must be delivered daily, otherwise it gets stale. this study proposes the dichotomy of accessible So none of the newspapers made gossip columns vs. esoteric instead of high vs. low. a staple of their weekly arts supplements and We isolated three sets of editorial choices to three of them—the Chicago Tribune, the Miami determine where a given newspaper’s priorities Herald and the Charlotte Observer—incorporat- lie—story assignment, story selection and story ed their daily celebrity round-ups into general placement. A newspaper tells its readers what it news rather than their everyday arts sections. considers most important by the reporters and Only three of the 15 newspapers gave gossip a critics it hires, by where it decides to assign prominent role in their daily arts sections. The them, by what individual artistic and cultural Oregonian and the Philadelphia Inquirer each events it covers most heavily and by what sto- devoted more than 20% of their daily story ries it chooses as its leads to its daily space to gossip and the Chicago Sun-Times rou- arts section and its weekend supplements. Our tinely placed Bill Zwecker’s celebrity column on findings isolated four important ways in which its arts front page. these newspapers avoided the Hollywood- Third, all of the newspapers had a strong based, celebrity-oriented, mass-media formula commitment to reviewing artistic and cultural that a magazine like Entertainment Weekly or a productions as opposed to merely focusing on daily television program like “Entertainment publicity and fluff. And film—the media industry Tonight” offers. whose publicity apparatus is probably the most sophisticated—was among the most heavily Where’s the Glitz? reviewed of all. Overall, more than one-third of First, television was afforded surprisingly all editorial space assigned to arts and culture low prominence. This is surprising because, by stories was devoted to film reviews. Not surpris- volume, coverage of television appears to be one ingly, publishing received the highest propor- of a daily newspaper’s major services. Stories tion—53% of all book articles were reviews. But and listings occupied on average more than movies came in second at 44%. The two San 25% of the overall space these newspapers Francisco papers—mostly in their shared Sunday devoted to arts and culture, yet almost all of this “Datebook” supplement—devoted more than half coverage was relegated to a section’s final pages. of their coverage of movies to critical reviews. In only four of the 15 newspapers did television Fourth, the month we studied—October stories regularly qualify for the in the 1998—happened to include the week-long high- daily arts section: the Cleveland Plain Dealer, fashion shows in London, Paris and Milan. A the Miami Herald, the Providence Journal and newspaper that sought a glamorous, celebrity- the San Francisco Chronicle. oriented image for its arts and culture coverage Second, gossip and celebrity columns were a would have given these shows pride of place. But daily feature of every newspaper, but these sto- only five of the 15 newspapers made high fashion ries, too, were rarely given prominent positions a high priority. The Cleveland Plain Dealer,

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 21 which featured fashion writer Janet McCue cities that are too small to support a large staff, extensively, and the Houston Chronicle both this can lead to a lack of coverage of those beats devoted more space to Milan than to any other in which a local reporter would be an unrivaled single artistic or cultural production in that expert—the local music scene, galleries, theater month. The Philadelphia Inquirer, meanwhile, and other performance. The Charlotte Observer paid an extensive tribute to the just-closed-up and the Providence Journal, two of the smallest house of Isaac Mizrahi, and the Rocky Mountain newspapers in our study, fell into this trap. Both News relied on syndicated fashion articles in its ran the fewest local reviews (25% and 23% of non-arts features sections. overall story space respectively vs. a 35% aver- The other newspaper that treated high fash- age) and skimped on coverage of the theater and ion as an important feature beat was the San music (specifically classical music in Charlotte), Francisco Chronicle. This newspaper illustrates while their television coverage occupied a higher that it is not the presence of a given type of arts percentage of space compared to any of the coverage that evinces its editorial philosophy, but other publications. its prominence. The Chronicle gave extensive space to high fashion and to interior decor, and Outside Help John Carman was routinely given the arts sec- Not all arts coverage is written by the news- tion lead to write about television—“P-phooey on paper’s own staff. Local coverage can easily be ‘Pfeiffer’ the Decade’s Worst Show”. . . “Plots Run supplemented by freelancers and national cover- Thick As Irish Stew on ‘Trinity’”—yet no one age by syndicates. The Providence Journal, for would characterize its arts coverage as negligent example, devoted the highest proportion of its of high culture. Cheek by jowl with “The Secret space to the two national beats of television and Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer”—a soon-to-be-can- the movies (45% vs. a 36% 15-newspaper-aver- celed UPN situation comedy about Abraham age) and headlined its daily arts section with syn- Lincoln’s —the Chronicle ran dicated previews of such made-for-TV movies reviews of the likes of “Tristan und Isolde” and such as Ann-Margret in “Life of the Party,” James Bill T. Jones as well as an op-ed appreciation of Garner in “Legalese” and the return of “CHiPS.” Frank Sinatra and a feature piece on Charles The San Jose Mercury News made least use of its Mingus. The Chronicle’s approach is quintessen- own staffers to cover arts and culture. During the tial of a general preference to blend high and low month of our study, syndicates accounted for rather than choosing one path over another. almost as many articles as its own reporters. It was the only newspaper out of the 15 in which Uniquely Qualified staffers accounted for fewer than half the articles Of course, most newspapers do not report on in its weekend supplement. such a culture-rich environment as the San Two other smaller newspapers, the Oakland Francisco Bay Area. For most newspapers, it is Tribune and the Oregonian, also used syndicates not so easy to achieve a deft mixture of in-depth heavily, but for a different reason. Rather than coverage of the national mass media with more giving prominence to the syndicated fare, they local and more highbrow art. These are the used it to free their own reporters to cover the horns of the dilemma. If a newspaper ignores local arts scene. In Oakland, the performing arts those artistic media that most of its readers enjoy occupied a higher share of overall arts and cul- most of the time—network television, Hollywood ture coverage than in any of the other newspa- movies, recorded music, mass-market publish- pers studied, and Chad Jones’ theater reviews ing—it looks hidebound and out of touch. But were a staple of the front page of the arts section. the mass media’s own industrial economies of In Portland, the music scene was more heavily scale dictate that they are national, or local, in represented than in any other newspaper except scope. A local newspaper has no special claim to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Oregonian had expertise in them compared with national news- the second most articles on rock ’n’ roll, the papers, entertainment magazines and specialist greatest number on R&B and hip hop, and the cable television channels. greatest number on the local music scene. So if a local newspaper’s assignment desk The use of syndicated content can thus be a found itself giving top priority to these national cost-effective way for a newspaper to cover the beats, it would be deploying its cultural national entertainment media and still have reporters in areas of intense competition, areas resources left for local specialization. Similarly, they would not be uniquely qualified to cover. In using freelancers can expand the range of local

22 REPORTING THE ARTS arts coverage. The Chicago Tribune specialized way to guarantee heavy coverage of the local arts in freelance assignments, averaging almost four scene. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, for example, such articles daily. It was the only newspaper to ran half as many freelance reviews as the run more freelance stories than syndicated Chicago Tribune, yet ran more articles on dance, ones. At the Tribune, more articles were writ- rock ’n’ roll and classical music. Music beat ten about local theater than at any of the other staffer John Soeder, for example, was regularly 15 newspapers, and its coverage of opera, given the lead of ’s daily dance, and other locally produced arts was “Entertainment” section for articles on the likes heavier than average. Critical reviews were the of R.E.M., Barenaked Ladies and the Afghan hallmark of the Tribune’s arts coverage. The Whigs. But two large metropolitan - paper ran the most reviews of any of the papers papers, the Houston Chronicle and the Miami in the study, averaging more than 50 a week. Herald, are counterexamples. They used fewer This was accomplished, in part, by a heavy freelancers to cover the arts than any of the reliance on freelancers. In most other newspa- other newspapers and ranked near the bottom pers, reviews were more likely to appear in the in their coverage of both music and the perform- weekend arts supplement—only in the Chicago ing arts. Instead of such local pieces, they relied Tribune were they as commonly seen on a daily on the national mass media for headline fare. basis. And the Tribune was the only newspaper Houston’s daily arts section would routinely fea- of the 15 to devote the majority of its coverage ture a Jeff Millar movie review, with such prod- of music to reviews. uct as “Antz,” “Clay Pigeons,” “Practical Magic” Less committed, but still unusually high in and “Holy Man” warranting lead status. In their freelance assignments were the Oregonian Miami, television was given unusual promi- and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Both newspapers nence as the arts section lead. provided unusually intensive coverage of the One important local artistic medium was local arts. In contrast to the Oregonian’s focus on almost universally ignored by the 15 newspapers rock ’n’ roll and R&B, the Inquirer headlined in the study—radio. Only the two Chicago papers classical music, averaging more than one article and the Philadelphia Inquirer ran more than an each day on that beat, more than any other news- occasional article on the programming options paper of the 15 except for the Plain Dealer in available for what is a primary listening source Cleveland. The big Philadelphia story in October for music of all types. The Chicago Tribune also 1998 was the return of conductor Riccardo Muti ran a major feature on public radio’s “This to the podium of the Philadelphia Symphony, ,” a locally produced but nationally warranting not only the cover story in the syndicated narrative-documentary show. Among Inquirer’s weekend arts supplement, but also the national media, the burgeoning field of video breaking news coverage in the metro section. games—whose revenues are now on a par with Admittedly, hiring freelancers is not the only that of Hollywood movies—was also all but invisi-

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 23 ble. This study revealed a couple of prime oppor- than cycle, that the shortage of tunities. Freelancers could offer their local news- news is no surprise. papers a regular radio column, and a national The supplements ran features instead. While syndicator could launch a video game column for a run-of-the-mill movie, book, play, or musical newspapers seeking to give their arts and culture act might receive a routine review, the very coverage a younger demographic profile. biggest arts and culture stories in these weekend supplements received extensive extra coverage— Not Newsworthy profiles, trend pieces, interviews, backgrounders. In each artistic field there were a few This strong promotional role became print breaking news stories during October 1998. media’s signature contribution to the publicity There were obituaries: singing cowboy Gene and marketing machine that tries to turn indi- Autry, former Hollywood child star Roddy vidual cultural productions into must-see events. McDowall, polka king Frank Yankovic. In the It was rare, however, that any mass-entertain- world of television, late night talk show host ment nationally produced, heavily hyped movie David Letterman’s schizophrenic stalker, made or television show should be the beneficiary of famous by the tabloids, committed suicide, and such attention. By and large, these local newspa- the teen-oriented drama “Felicity” stirred a pers resisted deploying this considerable appara- faux-scandal when a teenage screenwriter was tus frivolously. This did not mean that they were exposed as a 32-year-old. In the world of let- loath to engage in promotion. They just pre- ters, the Nobel Prize for Literature was award- ferred to expend their energies on worthy causes. ed to the Portuguese writer José Saramago. The National Gallery in , D.C. set Civic Virtues an attendance record with its Vincent van In this context, “worthy” meant either civic Gogh exhibit. And there was a tempest off- virtue or high art. When a cultural institution— Broadway in New York City over whether the whether a local museum or Oprah Winfrey— anti-clerical play “Corpus Christi” crossed the happened to have made the effort to take high line into blasphemy. art and popularize it for the masses, newspapers It is a marker of how much arts and culture were enthusiastic endorsers. Exhibit A during is a features—as opposed to a news—beat that October 1998 was Winfrey’s movie “Beloved,” so few of these news events received detailed based on ’s prize-winning novel. coverage by any of the newspapers we studied. There was no surprise that it was the single most When the top ten most heavily covered individ- heavily covered artistic production by the ual stories, artistic events or productions were Chicago Sun-Times, since the second city is ranked for each newspaper, arts news rarely Winfrey’s home. But the movie also topped the cracked the list. So much arts and culture cover- top ten at the Denver Post, the Miami Herald, age appears in weekend supplements, which are the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Providence intentionally designed to have a longer shelf life Journal and the San Francisco Examiner and

24 REPORTING THE ARTS was the single most heavily covered movie at five Art for the Masses of the remaining nine newspapers. A major goal of this study was to discover Painting and the visual arts usually fare whether, crudely put, major metropolitan news- poorly in terms of volume of arts coverage, but papers were elitist or populist. In their not when a local museum runs a blockbuster approach to arts and culture did they focus on show: Caravaggio at the North Carolina high art from a critical perspective? Or did they Museum led the Charlotte Observer’s coverage; engage in publicity and promotion for the pur- Mary Cassatt at the veyors of mass entertainment? received extensive coverage from the Tribune Our answer defies those categories. Mass and -Times; the Native-American artist entertainment was frequently grist for critical Tim Roybal was covered in depth by the Denver reviews. High-minded and civically virtuous Post; and Richard Diebenkorn at San high art was often rewarded with extensive free Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art made a publicity. The marketing officers of major muse- splash in both the Chronicle and the Examiner. ums and artistic centers should therefore feel In Chicago and Cleveland, two historic the- encouraged in their pursuit of blockbuster high- aters—the Oriental and the Allen—were reno- art exhibitions. High art—if it was produced, vated and reopened and rewarded with detailed presented or marketed in a way that made it coverage in the Tribune and the Plain Dealer engage a mainstream audience—attracted the respectively. The $17 million expansion of the most comprehensive and prominent coverage of Berkeley Repertory was the number-one story all artistic categories. in the Oakland Tribune while next door in This is the most important finding of this Silicon Valley, the opening of the Tech Museum study for presenters of arts and culture, whether was a major story for all Bay Area publications. they are in the commercial sphere—such as Such cultural institutions are not only signifi- Hollywood studios, record companies, publish- cant to the renewal of urban areas, they also ing houses or television networks—or not-for- attract tourists. Similarly, in Denver and profit—such as museums, opera companies, Chicago, annual film festivals made movie cov- symphony orchestras, theater companies or erage less national and more local in scope. In dance troupes. If they make art of high quality San Francisco the annual jazz festival received that is accessible to a wide audience, they will detailed coverage from the Chronicle, the find newspaper editors and predis- Examiner and the Oakland Tribune. posed to give them pride of place. —Andrew Tyndall

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 25