At 04:29 PM 1/7/97 EST, you wrote:

>you know, it used to be that cultural reportage -previewed- what was about
>to show up so us yakes from the woods would know what to do instead what we
>missed. it's so doggam easy to just walk into a gallery and write a bunch of
>second hand recycled attitude from artforum.
>
>you know, like jenny silverstein used to talk about the show that was coming
>up instead of what she did last week. and ten years ago or more, the spectator
>actually profiled unknown artists who were gonna be playing the cradle or the
>brewery the upcoming weekend instead of the indy writing more than a sentence
>about who broke up that you can't see anymore or already put out a record and
>no longer plays around here.

Newspapers don't hire reporters who know anything about
art/music/literature/theater. Or if they do, they give them other beats and
expect them to cover art/music/literature/theater as they have time, which
is never. Or they collect up all the press releases and hold them until
they're desperate to fill space, and then they rifle furiously through the
pile until they find something -- ANYTHING -- that can be accomplished in,
say, two hours. That's when you find the intrepid reporter dashing off to
the museum to try to get in before the exhibit closes and then running back
to the office to stare at a computer screen, regurgitate ArtForum, and try
to do justice to someone's life work in about an hour or so.

[by the way, has anyone seen the new BookForum? I can't find a place that
carries it]

My summary of the attitude of many newspapers toward arts coverage:

1. It's filler
2. It's for women
3. It takes space from sewer policy coverage
4. Newspapers are not good places for abstractions, or the discussion of
such things
5. Art is soft. Therefore, it is not news.
6. Art is a luxury, and not an essential part of our lives. It is simply a
diversion from the real business of life, which is politics.

A letter writing campaign demanding more and better arts coverage, as corny
as it may sound, would help change things. Seriously.

        --Duncan