The Playgoer: Arts Critics/Arts Bloggers

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Monday, May 15, 2006

Arts Critics/Arts Bloggers

George Hunka directs our attention to a great debate going on over at ArtsJournal among their regular critics over the value of arts blogs. Quite a bit of nastiness (or at least condescension)still detectable amongst the MSM-schooled journalists towards the upstarts. One exception is Terry Teacout, "representing" for theatre, who makes an eloquent case for their (ok, our) value. And, 'tis true, Terry has been a supporter of this and many other fledgling bloggers, so good on him.

Heartily recommended blog wonkery!

2 comments:

freespeechlover said...

Playgoer, the only way to read the condescension is symptomatically. There isn't anything that the print journalists can do about the blogs, and they know it. They have some choices, which is to cease being so self-deluding about their own self-oh what word can we use other than the dreaded "censorship"? How about self-monitoring?

I have nothing against print journalism, but particularly if it is published outside of the U.S. where people aren't trained to believe that the narrator is akin to god--omnipotent, no stakes in anything.

Print journalism in the U.S. is skewered on its own you know what, because of the yawning gap between hypostasized notions of objectivity and the grandiose and highly politicized game that major visible icons of the profession have been playing--i.e. Judith Miller, Bob Woodward, etc. Judith Miller considers herself deeply committed to U.S. National Security, not even a position close to the fabled objectivity that she runs on about.

These so-called icons have made a mockery of the once, long time ago, respected medium of U.S. print journalism.

Print journalists have too much to answer for at this moment in time to be going after blogs without looking like they are suffering a strange form of narcissistic angst.

Their condescension has a reactionary "feel" to it for a reason.

freespeechlover said...

I should have said that I consider art journals part of print media rather than "journalism" alone, even though I think some of them function as a kind of "depth" journalism for art worlds. I just get tired of the print media vs. blogs arguments, and they carry some of the same features across genres, forms of art, etc.