The Australian - 22 November 2011
FROM this month, the ABC will no longer have a separate arts unit: a move that means the loss or redeployment of staff and the axing of specialist programs Art Nation (on ABC1) and Artworks (Radio National). Much has been said about the national broadcaster shirking its charter responsibilities to Australian culture, but the problem goes further than simple scheduling changes. It points to a more general disregard, across the media, for serious journalistic coverage of the arts and culture.
This is happening when more Australians are more culturally attuned than at any time in history: indeed, our lives are inundated with music, pictures and words, and the digital noise of social media.
The need for cultural journalists to report and analyse it all couldn't be greater.
But this is also about the specialised work of arts journalists who report not only on cultural trends but on the detail -- creative, financial, personal and political -- of artistic endeavour.
Consider some of the arts stories covered by The Australian during the past 12 months: the deaths of admired figures such as Joan Sutherland and Margaret Olley; the vigorous interstate competition for cultural tourism; scams in the ticketing business; the failure of the multi-million-dollar musical Xanadu; the inspired art-making and deep problems that persist in the Aboriginal art sector; revelations that a National Gallery of Victoria executive had been banned from running Australian companies; and the multi-layered debate around the national cultural policy.
Nine in 10 Australians participate in the arts in some way, according to the Australia Council for the Arts, and the federal government supports the arts to the tune of $740 million a year. Such a high level of public investment demands the scrutiny of journalists who know the field.
Yet the attitude persists that arts journalism is somehow indulgent, unimportant and dispensable, attracting too few readers or viewers to warrant the media space.
ABC1 is dropping Art Nation, its only general-interest arts magazine, because it costs $2 million a year to produce and attracts only 60,000 viewers.
The broadcaster also has scrapped two of its specialist cultural programs on Radio National, The Book Show and Artworks, and rolled books and arts into a single daily program.
While this newspaper expanded its arts coverage in 2009 to two pages every weekday, plus the weekend Review, arts pages at other publications have shrunk. The Age in Melbourne regularly had two daily arts pages; one is now the norm. Arts news on commercial television is virtually absent unless a famous artist dies or wins the Archibald Prize.
Nor is arts journalism recognised -- and thereby encouraged -- in the way of other journalistic beats. The nation's pre-eminent journalism awards, the Walkleys, hand out gongs for specialist fields such as business, community affairs and sport reporting, but not the arts. The Pascall Prize -- an annual $15,000 award for critical writing -- honours the work of critics but not arts newsgatherers or feature writers.
Douglas McLennan, founder of news aggregator Artsjournal.com, paints an alarming picture of the state of arts journalism in North America. He notes, for example, that there is only one full-time dance critic in the US, while Canada has no full-time classical music critic. The quality of arts journalism remains high, McLennan adds, but he has noticed that much of the best work is international in outlook, while stories about local communities are in decline.
Meanwhile, arts journalism has migrated online -- there are 300,000 arts bloggers out there -- but most have modest readership and no means of support.
These were among the conundrums discussed in Los Angeles this month at an international gathering of arts journalists. For 10 years the Arts Journalism Fellowship, organised by the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and funded by the Getty Foundation, has been a hothouse for thinking about the profession.
This year, 27 fellows returned to LA to test-drive six methods of arts journalism that may offer models for the future.
The workshop, called Engine29, attracted generalist arts writers and specialists in the fields of visual arts, classical and popular music, architecture and comic books, representing outlets such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, Associated Press and The Australian.
One group set out on bicycles -- in a city dominated by the car -- to map a new cultural route in LA. New-look web pages were designed: a zeitgeist-timeline of Californian creativity, and a community-theatre space for professional critics, theatres and bloggers.
A fourth group looked at video-game design and how it could be used to present arts stories imaginatively; and a fifth looked at building an audience for arts journalism by broadening the conversation to areas such as business and social entrepreneurship.
My project with two AP journalists -- music editor Nekesa Mumbi Moody and TV entertainment reporter Ryan Pearson -- was to bring social media into arts reporting so journalists could better listen to their audience.
We went to a concert by R&B stars Chris Brown and T-Pain, and harvested tweets and YouTube clips from people at the event. We then assembled social media and professional reviews into a multimedia story: an attempt to break down the old hierarchies of arts criticism.
There were several lessons from the exercise. First, the rise of social media and the blogosphere -- where everyone's a critic -- hasn't replaced arts journalism but complements it. There is nothing to be afraid of. Indeed, journalists' newsgathering instincts become essential when attempting to make sense of a torrent of tweets and shape them into a coherent report.
Second, arts journalists cannot walk around with their ears and eyes closed, ignorant of what is going on around them. Writing about the arts demands observation: what does the picture look like? How is this musician's playing different? Is there a story here that isn't on the press release?
Third, it is by asserting the profession of arts journalism that arts journalists increase in skills and number. Make every story count, and readers and viewers will value what arts journalists do.
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THE Walkley Awards for journalism are handed out on Sunday, with prizes for best reporting in business, community affairs and sport -- but not the arts.
The absence of arts journalism from the nation's peak journalism honours is not unusual, however. The arts is one of the most under-recognised beats that journalists cover.A $7500 scholarship for arts journalists awarded by the Melbourne Press Club and the Trawalla Foundation was discontinued last year. The Trawalla Foundation (established by Melbourne business couple Alan and Carol Schwartz) has opted to consider another, more general form of media scholarship.
The only substantial honour for arts journalism is the $15,000 Pascall Prize (disclosure: this writer is on the board). Named for a former columnist at this newspaper, Geraldine Pascall, the prize has been won by just about every serious cultural writer of a certain age in the country. But its emphasis is on the particular discipline of criticism, rather than the important work of day-to-day reporting on the cultural world.
So is there a case for a national award for excellence in arts reporting?
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren says the Walkley Awards recognise forms of journalism -- such as feature-writing -- rather than specific subject areas. The award categories will be reviewed late next year and arts journalism is likely to be on the agenda.
