Making arts journalism pay today

In an age of waning newspaper circulation, and rapidly shrinking arts coverage in the printed press, critics are having to invent new ways to bring their reviews to the public and to finance their work. I'd like you to help keep me uptodate with the new face of arts journalism.

There is no doubt that journalists are having to get fantastically creative. Spot.us is a website by which people can donate money to pay for a journalist to go and investigate a particular issue that people feel concerned about. Lori Waxman was an art critic for Parachute and Modern Painters etc but was finding it harder and harder to get her work commissioned. She has now turned her art criticism into an art form. She has generous funding as an artist-art critic and her project is called the 60 Words per Minute Art Critic. She is touring the US, setting up shop in galleries for two or three days and inviting local artists to request a written critical review on a first-come, first-served basis. It seems that these days you really do need to be an entrepreneur to be an art critic.

The blogosphere is helping to give coverage to young artists, and to bring arts events into the public discourse, but it surely not enough to fill the void left by the major journalistic institutions. I have recently discovered ArtsJournal.com. This is a website that pulls together material on the arts found elsewhere on the web. It also has 62 regular bloggers writing original content. By giving away as much content as it can, it has becomes central to the arts community. It is funded by adverts and has only 3 paid employees. Blogging is hardly financially lucrative, and it seems pretty apparent to me that as a general rule, a review is less good if a person is not paid. Most blogs are highly passionate, opinionated and voiceferous discussions -- of previously published material. Without scoops of fresh meat, they will die.

The following article by Andras Szanto, (Senior Lecturer, MA Art Business, Sotheby's Institute of Art) is essential reading on this topic.
'With newspapers in terminal decline, what future for arts journalism?' The Art Newspaper, May, 2009

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=17214