Introduction Arts Coverage in a New Century

ive years ago the National Arts resources that metropolitan newsrooms allo- Journalism Program published cate to the arts are generally flat or in retreat. Reporting the Arts, the first compre- During the past five years, none of the F hensive analysis of how the arts are newspapers that we tracked in this study has covered in mainstream American news media. increased the amount of editorial space devot- As we promised then, the study was “first of all ed to news, criticism or other types of journal- an effort to create a baseline for future exami- ism (not including listings) about arts and nation of trends in journalistic coverage of the entertainment. Even with listings, only one arts in the United States.” paper expanded its arts-and-culture newshole. With Reporting the Arts II we are not only At some dailies, the coverage has declined revisiting the same 10 communities and their sharply. local papers, and reexamining arts coverage in The majority of newspapers are running the national press and on broadcast television. fewer articles about arts and culture. Dailies We are also expanding our report by taking a are shoehorning shorter pieces into shrinking closer look at the burgeoning areas of the alter- newsholes and assigning a larger share of sto- native press, online arts coverage, reporting on ries to freelancers, syndicators and wire servic- arts by minorities and in the ethnic press and es than five years ago. Stories about the “high” cultural programming on National Public arts and hard reporting about commercial and Radio, among other topics. We are doing this nonprofit cultural institutions continue to take with the aim of further gauging the health of a backseat to the traditional staples of preview- arts journalism in America and capturing the ing and reviewing popular entertainment, such changes swirling around the field as we set off as the release of the latest movie, CD or nation- into this new century. al concert tour. The trends are not encouraging. Moreover, with few exceptions, papers While more Americans are participating in almost everywhere are devoting more of their cultural activities than at any time in our histo- arts space to listings. Editorial space for arts ry, and although the arts have evolved to journalism is being squeezed from two sides: a unprecedented size and complexity, the near-universal decline in the overall amount of

10 REPORTING THE ARTS II space dedicated to the area, and by a frequent expansion of listings. Key Findings In fairness, it must be said that the arts are not being singled out for cutbacks. Papers Arts sections have maintained their relative positions of everywhere are shrinking, and in most of the prominence at metropolitan newspapers, gaining ground dailies we studied, other sections are shrinking slightly vis-à-vis hard-news sections and losing ground to faster. The size of arts sections has generally sports sections. declined relative to sports sections. However, they have gained in prominence compared with Newspapers as a whole are shrinking. So a stable position in hard-news sections at most newspapers, and a declining environment translates to less coverage than it vis-à-vis non-art feature sections, such as din- did five years ago. ing and travel, at many dailies. Nevertheless, the fact remains that most No metropolitan newspaper in our study increased the size papers dedicate less newsprint to the arts at a of its newshole for arts journalism. Of the 15 we tracked, time when there is more art to write about. seven cut back severely, five cut back moderately, three Reportage and criticism about the arts are not maintained roughly the same levels. keeping up with society. Articles are shorter now than they were five years ago. Gaps and Tensions Almost every newspaper cut the average length of its arts The widening chasm between the amount of stories: At seven of the 15 newspapers they are now at least newsworthy cultural activity and the actual 20 percent shorter. coverage allotted to it is creating tensions inside newsrooms and cultural communities. All the cutbacks in the story count were directed at articles At the newspapers there is an emerging aware- with a staffer’s byline. Metropolitan newspapers run as ness that the existing structures of arts journal- many freelance, syndicated and wire service articles on the ism are overloaded and outmoded. Editors and arts now as they did five years ago. writers frequently complain that incremental adjustments to the preview-review model of The overall newshole for the TV grid and arts listings, as coverage cannot keep up with rapid changes in opposed to articles, has not eroded. In newspapers’ weekend the cultural environment. As more news is arts supplements, the listings often increased in size. forced down the same pipeline, the limitations of the arts-journalism infrastructure become Journalism about movies and entertainment television suf- increasingly evident. fered across-the-board cuts at metropolitan newspapers. For artists and arts organizations, the Coverage of music, the performing arts and publishing dearth of adequate exposure and critical feed- avoided such general cutbacks—and gained in relative back creates mounting frustrations. Many pro- prominence. ducers of culture, from offbeat theater groups to large Hollywood studios, are experimenting The New York Times remains preeminent in the volume and with new ways of circumventing the main- diversity of its arts coverage. Only the Chicago Tribune and stream media to attract and inform audiences the San Francisco Chronicle in our study devoted even as (see Chapter 29). much as half the Times’ space to arts and culture. Drawing on a detailed analysis of local and national dailies in October 1998, Reporting the Network television journalism is split. The nightly newscasts Arts documented a robust commitment to cul- continue to pay minimal attention to arts news. The morn- tural journalism. Although, as the study noted, ing programs have doubled their interest in the past five the coverage appeared “in a mix of heavily fea- years, focusing more than ever on celebrity culture and mass turized, once-a-week or twice-a-week enter- entertainment. tainment sections,” in which listings accounted for up to half the space, the research also The tabloid television news programs—Entertainment revealed that some of the papers we studied Tonight, Access Hollywood and Extra—teem with celebrity were making significant efforts to upgrade soundbites and entertainment clips. Yet almost half their their coverage. content concerns gossip, scandal and non-show-business Reporting the Arts was the first study of its stories rather than coverage of mass entertainment itself. kind. There were no benchmarks for compari- son. Yet there was reason for hope. The country was in a phase of economic and cultural expan-

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 11 sion. At the same time, a refreshing openness to the arts had taken hold as the “culture wars” of the previous decade faded to a memory. Cities were discovering the arts as a means of revitalizing downtowns. The dotcom economy sparked a sense of unimaginable opportunity for both old- and new-media organizations. Since then, the country has witnessed the bursting of the stock-market bubble, a reces- sion, a terrorist attack and two wars. The tur- moil has left marks on cultural and media organizations. In the arts, years of investments into new facilities and programming gave way to belt-tightening. News organizations likewise trimmed back their budgets and expectations due to declining advertising sales, losses from online ventures and, in some cases, unexpected outlays for war coverage. In the midst of these adjustments the arts have not been foremost on people’s minds.

Hard Facts Adding to the challenges for newspapers are several long-term trends that are diminishing the resources that even the most well-meaning news organizations can devote to the arts. Electronic media are supplanting newspa- many leading metropolitan dailies are losing pers. Average weekday newspaper readership readership and advertising revenue because of dropped to 55.4 percent in 2002 from 58.6 per- their lackluster success in attracting minority cent in 1998—a steady erosion since the 1960s, audiences. when 80 percent of adults read newspapers.1 These pressures place hard limits on how Americans today spend no less time in front of much space and staffing newspapers can devote the TV than five years ago, but they are listen- to the arts. Maintaining a commitment to cul- ing to more radio and spending a lot more time tural coverage requires motivated newsroom online. The year 2003 was the first in which an leadership as well as internal advocacy by writ- average American spent more time online than ers and editors. It demands new ideas that make reading a newspaper. the most of scarce resources and help journalists This is part of a larger phenomenon—the do a better job of telling readers about the ener- broad-based decline in reading the printed gy and diversity—and also the failures and page. Book reading is on its way to becoming a shortfalls—of America’s cultural life. minority activity in the United States, dropping by 7 percent between 1992 and 2002, to no Priorities more than 56.6 percent of adults.2 Newspapers Despite the downward trends, it is undeniable are coping with the same societal shift from the that, over the long term, newspapers must rely printed page to the pixilated screen. And on arts and entertainment coverage in order to declining circulation translates into smaller grow and retain their readership. It is a ques- news budgets all around. tion of purpose and means of survival for news- The news industry is also late in adjusting papers in an age of media saturation. to America’s changing demographic landscape. With their once-a-day publication sched- In California, for example, more than half of ules, newspapers are losing their hard-news Asian and Pacific Americans, blacks and franchise to electronic sources. Local arts cov- Latinos identify ethnically specific media as erage, though, is under no such threat. This is their main source of news, entertainment and one reason why most dailies focus so heavily on advertising.3 While the growing strength of covering local cultural news (see Chapter 21). minority and non-English news outlets comes Moreover, arts and culture stories often as welcome news (see Chapters 20 and 21), deliver the kind of depth, nuance and perspec-

12 REPORTING THE ARTS II tive that’s missing from television. They can going head-to-head with alternative weeklies also compete with the world of specialized Web by launching special supplements targeted at sites and blogs that commands an ever-larger young readers (Chapter 15). The division of share of culture-savvy readers’ attention. And labor between the printed paper and the online despite having to fend off such new challenges, edition remains a work in progress at most papers gain from the arts as an economic life- newspapers. line. For far from being a drag on newsroom These changes have introduced a measure of budgets, the arts pages attract healthy advertis- innovation into arts coverage, but only to a ing revenues, and they have the potential to be point. Interesting initiatives and outstanding a magnet for readers from relatively untapped editors and writers exist everywhere; but what segments of the public, including youth, minor- is remarkable on the whole is how little the rou- ity and female audiences. tine formats and procedures of arts journalism Most significant, the so-called “copyright have evolved over the years, especially in news- industries”—industries built substantially on papers. For example, the discipline-based sys- creative content, including but not limited to tem of daily arts journalism departments—the- the nonprofit and commercial arts—have ater, visual art, dance, film, music, etc.—is an expanded in recent years. They now comprise a inheritance of the past. But no newspaper has sizable part of the nation’s economy and lay broken out of this mold to embrace the fluid claim to a growing share of America’s work- eclecticism of our cross-disciplinary culture. No force (see Chapter 2). The arts have become matter how much the landscape has changed, more important to the lives and livelihoods of the main sections and staffing charts of the communities. They are something no newspa- papers we analyzed are surprisingly similar to per can afford to ignore. Covering A&E is not what we found five years ago. In many papers just a cultural or civic responsibility, undertak- they have been static for a much longer time. en to satisfy a vaguely defined public mandate. As editors and publishers increasingly recog- Strategies nize, these journalistic areas are moving inex- In thinking about a comprehensive strategy for orably from a secondary, “back-of-the-book” arts coverage, newspapers typically navigate status toward the core business of every main- between two extremes. The traditional model stream news organization. emphasizes the paper’s filtering role. The key figures in the effort are the editor and the critic. New Approaches The promise to readers is: “Our experts will The reports from the 10 metropolitan areas fea- select the most noteworthy artistic productions tured in this study document how newspapers and elucidate their importance, meanings, everywhere are searching for the right mix of strengths and weaknesses for you.” topics and sections to deliver the most cogent In recent years the emphasis has been shift- arts coverage to their readers. Meanwhile, jour- ing towards the other extreme. As editorial nalism about the arts continues to gravitate to copy around the TV grid and the weekend list- other media, which is why we have included ings shrinks at most local dailies, what is grow- analyses of changes in arts coverage on the ing is the amount of capsule information about radio (Chapter 16), television (Chapters 18 and all the cultural offerings in the community. 28) and the Web (Chapter 17). Many papers see arts coverage as a service to While newspaper editors monitor these time-strapped readers: “Only you, the reader, developments, they are also experimenting with can know how to spend your leisure time; our new kinds of journalistic assignments (for exam- job is to supply information about your options, ple, allowing critics to range more freely within with comprehensive listings and brief reviews and between art forms) and devising more ver- to suit every possible interest or need.” satile article formats (such as condensed weekly Meanwhile, editors and publishers at many roundups and critics’ journals). Many papers are papers are pushing for a third kind of arts jour- developing novel listings styles (especially cap- nalism. The economic contributions and orga- sule reviews) and eye-catching visual presenta- nizational complexities of the arts are more tion techniques (snappy boxes and teasers, widely appreciated today. Arts news reporting, charts and color photography). as distinct from arts criticism, appears to be In addition, some papers are reassessing gaining ground as a strategic priority across the the role of their daily and weekend arts sec- industry. The bellwether New York Times, for tions, to counter the “arts ghetto” effect, and example, has reduced its emphasis on reviews

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 13 while increasing the amount of arts coverage it nalism by, for and about Latinos and Asian runs in its hard news sections. Americans, as well as coverage of arts abroad. Making arts journalism “harder” would ele- In a departure from our last report, the vol- vate its prestige in newsrooms. Editors often ume concludes with a selection of Critical pine for “critics who could pick up the phone.” Perspectives on key issues in arts journalism But finding a balance between criticism and and especially criticism. These essays are reporting is not easy. Different traditions, skills offered as a counterweight to the statistical and temperaments are involved. There is also a results in the earlier chapters. Quantitative potential for conflict of interest when critics, findings are essential for a realistic understand- whose job it is to judge and sometimes take ing of how the news media cover the arts—but sides in cultural debates, are asked to report dis- they go only so far. The eight articles included passionately about the artists and organizations here, written by leading critics and reporters, they cover. Similarly, artists and organizations delve further into the aesthetic and ethical may be reluctant to speak to reporters who, dou- dilemmas underlying contemporary American Key bling as critics, may have panned their work. arts journalism. Throughout this report we These issues remain unresolved in news- feature an arrow symbol indicating broad trends in rooms, but one prognosis is certain: The reeval- To Keep in Mind aspects of arts coverage. uation of the role of critical reviews is shaping First, the cities and newspapers scrutinized WHAT THE ARROWS MEAN: up to be the defining battle in newspaper arts here do not, statistically speaking, amount to departments for years to come. an accurate portrayal of American arts journal- ism. Other clusters of case studies might have In This Report yielded somewhat different results. We are con- Reporting the Arts II is the result of a two-year fident, though, that the larger picture of trans- effort by a team of more than 40 people. Most forming newsrooms and communities is accu- of the research and writing was done by the rate for the country as a whole today. 2003-04 class of National Arts Journalism Second, October is not a typical month of Program fellows, professional journalists the year. We chose it because it’s a busy time for drawn from news organizations across the arts coverage. The cities and the papers—which United States, as well as two journalists from were picked to encompass a wide range of the Netherlands. Additional essays were filed types—add up to an illustrative cross section of by some 2002-03 fellows, NAJP alumni and communities and news organizations, analyzed freelance writers. The content analysis of news- at the peak of their annual performance. paper and TV coverage was supervised by Third, our goal here is not to deliver a Andrew Tyndall, a media analyst and publisher “report card” on one or another of the featured of the Tyndall Report. A dedicated group of papers. We’re grateful to them for their willing- Columbia University students was responsible ness to subject themselves to the analysis and, for painstakingly coding nearly 600 editions of as such, to serve as a mirror for industry-wide the 20 newspapers in our study. trends. The report begins with an overview of the Fourth, while we touch upon a wide spec- changing cultural landscape and the economic trum of media, the main emphasis throughout contributions of the arts, based on recent remains on newspapers, still the most widely research findings, followed by a comparative consumed local news source. look at the coverage in 17 local and three Fifth, the quantitative content analysis at national dailies. The largest section of the the heart of this study, and especially over-time report (Chapters 4-13) surveys the cultural life comparisons, are subject to error. Obtaining, and local news media of the same 10 cities that filing, examining and coding thousands of arti- we featured in our last study, with a special cles in hundreds of papers amounts to a com- emphasis on their daily papers. To compile plicated process rife with opportunities for mis- these chapters, NAJP fellows visited all the takes. These are compounded when cities and conducted extensive interviews with measurements happen at two points in time artists, journalists and cultural managers. and are made by different groups of coders. (A Next, the study takes a closer look at trends methodological summary appears in the in national media, including public radio, Appendix.) We have emphasized only trends broadcast television, alternative weeklies and that were discernible even when we were the Internet. Other sections take up arts jour- accounting for a double margin of error.

14 REPORTING THE ARTS II Going Forward creation, distribution and consumption are Some of the most urgent issues confronting arts being rewritten on a daily basis. In an environ- journalism today cannot be resolved in a study ment of flux, can the protocols of arts journal- like this one. Beyond the obvious question of ism stay the same? writing quality, which is almost impossible to The last five years have added new dimen- gauge systematically, several thorny dilemmas sions to our nation’s artistic life. But years of appear only in passing on these pages. These growth and adaptation have also revived con- range from ethical issues—such as accepting cerns that the ecology of arts journalism is ill- “freebies,” plagiarism and copyright-infringe- equipped to reflect the energy and eclecticism ment—to various kinds of conflicts of interest. of the arts in America. This report is intended These topics await future NAJP studies. to help the news media catch up to new The backdrop to all such questions is a rap- cultural realities, and transform its own rou- idly changing culture where the rules of artistic tines in the process.

The Editors

1Source: Newspaper Association of America, based on the 50 top markets measured by Scarborough Research; available at www.naa.org. 2Literary reading is down 14 percent, with not much more than a third of male adults now reading any kind of literature at all. From: Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. National Endowment for the Arts. Research Division Report #46. Washington, D.C.: June 2004. According to the report, which is based on Census figures, 56.6 percent of U.S. adults read a book in the 12 months prior to the 2002 SPPA study and 46.7 percent read some literature. 3Félix Gutiérrez for USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism. “Communicating To and About All Californians.” Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 2002. The report cites surveys by New California Media.

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