A Fly on the Wall among Arts Journalists

Claire Peeps

Do funders and journalists of art have anything in common? Surprisingly, quite a lot. Both have the power to dispense coveted resources; are presumed to possess expertise equal to the task; operate within opaque systems that can be a source of confusion to their intended beneficiaries; receive little in the way of honest, constructive feedback; and have difficulty measuring and describing their success.

These were among the many small but discomfiting revelations I came to during the inaugural USC Annenberg Getty Arts Journalism Program, which was launched in Los Angeles in April. The program brought together six mid-career journalists from around the U.S. and abroad for three weeks of seminars with artists and cultural leaders, with the goal of enriching contemporary arts reporting and criticism. I was asked to moderate the program's wrap-up session, and to that end I hovered as the proverbial fly on the wall during many provocative discussions about the challenges, responsibilities, and craft of cultural journalism.

The six fellows in the program included editors, reporters, freelance writers, and producers from Minnesota Public Radio, Time Out New York, The New York Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, and Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, South Africa. They were treated to an extraordinary array of art by program director and long-time dance critic Sasha Anawalt as they traveled by bus from one corner of the city to another. They took in performances, exhibitions, back-stage tours, and closed-door meetings with a host of arts leaders and journalistic peers.

With the focus of this first year's gathering on cultural institutions, the fellows spent considerable time with the principals of flagship organizations such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, California Institute of the Arts, and the J. Paul Getty Center. They attended a symposium with playwright Athol Fugard, Mark Taper Forum Artistic Director Gordon Davidson, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Parks; met with Frank Gehry in his Santa Monica-based studios and went on a hard-hat tour of Disney Hall under construction; and reviewed Rem Koolhaas' plans for the overhaul of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with members of the museum's architectural selection committee.

I was struck by the parallels between the choices an editor must make and the ones a funder faces when trying to allocate resources among competing needs.

They also explored smaller and mid-sized organizations such as the Watts Towers Arts Center, SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center), and the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Their travels included a guided tour of L.A.'s murals with visual artist and activist Judy Baca; a conversation with David Wilson, the mercurial director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology; and a visit to Peter Sellars' class, "Art as Moral Action," at UCLA, where Bill Viola was screening and discussing his videos.

Among the many discussion topics on their agenda were such questions as: How do you invest in artists? How can one concert affect a composer's career? How are reviews used? How does an arts reporter know what lines not to cross? Many more questions were raised during the course of the program and, in truth, more were raised than answered. Like funders, the journalists bring to their work varying backgrounds, perspectives, and personalities and, like funders, operate within varying constraints depending on the nature of the institutions they work for.

I found all the dialogue fascinating and some of it disturbing. The diversity of opinions, lack of consensus around many topics, and upbeat spirit of collegial debate made the whole event highly stimulating. There were many gray areas in which the fellows collided. Because the focus of the program was on cultural institutions, much of the conversation revolved around the journalists' relationship to organizations and how they prioritize what gets coverage. At one point, I asked them what mechanisms they have to research events that fall outside an institutional framework.

I offered as examples recent performances in Los Angeles that occurred in unusual venues or for specific (i.e., non-subcribers) audiences. When Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan gave his last concert in Los Angeles before his death, for instance, not only did he have a sold-out, two-hour gig at the House of Blues, but he also performed an all-night concert of traditional Sufi music in the ballroom of an airport hotel. Ticket prices ranged from $100 - $1,000, and the room was packed with more than 1,000 people, mostly Pakistanis.

Similarly, when a Cambodian classical dance troupe came to Los Angeles some years ago, not only did they perform as part of a series at a local venue, but they also sold 3,000 tickets in four hours to residents of the Long Beach Cambodian community, using no print advertising. Tickets went on sale at noon, and by 4 pm flyers and word of mouth had sold out a concert to take place that night.

If journalism is to be an indicator of social development, of what's bubbling up in a particular environment, surely these events ought to be of interest. But neither the hotel music concert nor the last-minute dance concert was covered by Los Angeles press.

One of the participants in the discussion, a former newspaper editor, put the question back to me: What do you do if available column inches in the paper force you to decide between covering Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the hotel or Esa Pekka Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic? I don't know, I said, what do you do? You cover Esa Pekka, he replied, because ultimately "it's institution to institution."

I was struck by the parallels between the choices an editor must make and the ones a funder faces when trying to allocate resources among competing needs

They also explored smaller and mid-sized organizations such as the Watts Towers Arts Center, SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center), and the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Their travels included a guided tour of L.A.'s murals with visual artist and activist Judy Baca; a conversation with David Wilson, the mercurial director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology; and a visit to Peter Sellars' class, “Art as Moral Action,” at UCLA, where Bill Viola was screening and discussing his videos.

I was struck by the parallels between the choices an editor must make and the ones a funder faces when trying to allocate resources among competing needs — cultural facilities vs. programming, audience development vs. support to artists, sustainability vs. innovation — not to mention who's in the board room and the attendant burden of external professional relationships that board members bring with them.

I found myself similarly disquieted by the discussion about how one defines and measures success — or, more accurately, by the lack of discussion. When I asked what success looks like from a journalistic perspective, I was met with a meditative silence.

One journalist reported receiving a letter once from a university professor to say that a particular article she had written had been incorporated into his course curriculum, so she considered that a success. In the age of electronic communication, others offered, there's increased feedback from readers.

But generally, they agreed, they are writing into a black hole, and doing so at such a break-neck pace that they rarely have time to look back. Nor do they know whom they are writing for. Despite all the market research conducted by newspapers, the journalists reported that, in the end, the best they can do is to write for an “ideal reader,” the reader whom they would like to have read their work. The church-and-state separation between publishing and editorial inhibits them from gathering informative feedback that would better reveal their audience.

The parallels between funding and journalism struck me again, but here, in fact, there seems to be more disjuncture than similarity. For all the ups and downs of the foundation community's focus on measurable outcomes in recent years, evaluation doesn't seem to be on the radar screen yet for journalists. As a result, there is little discussion about issues of responsibility, accountability, transparency, and protocol that might result in a useful articulation of industry standards.

These concerns notwithstanding, I was humbled by the fellows' dedication to their work, and the stresses they endure. Crushing deadlines, an overwhelming volume of time-sensitive material to sift and prioritize for coverage, inadequate numbers of staff, lack of administrative back-up, modest pay, and even basic job security for those in the freelance mode are among the many challenges they confront daily. Securing column inches for the arts against the competing demands of other sections of the paper — hard news, sports, commercial entertainment (i.e., movies), advertising, op/ed — is everyday a Herculean feat.

When I asked what success looks like from a journalistic perspective, I was met with a meditative silence.

Among the greatest challenges facing journalists is training and continuing education. They are often asked to cover material outside their field of expertise. As demographic shifts in our cities become more marked, the need for broader and deeper knowledge only increases. The trend at many newspapers, however, is to reduce the number of arts reporters on their staff. Many major metropolitan area newspapers have reduced the number of journalists, in some cases cutting back from more than five to one or two.

Endeavors like the USC Annenberg Getty Arts Journalism Program are an important counter-force to these trends. By highlighting the importance of critical dialogue, expanding journalists' skills, and establishing peer networks among writers and editors across the country, such programs might yield improved coverage of and increased engagement in the arts. As Michael Parks, dean of the USC School of Journalism, eloquently stated to the fellows, good journalism is about seeking truth and understanding, and should enable people's participation in the world around them. This is no less true in the arts than in other sectors.

The Getty's partnership with USC is not the first philanthropic effort to support arts journalism. The Knight Foundation and the Ford Foundation, among others, have given journalism a high priority in their giving. The largest such effort has been spearheaded by the Pew Charitable Trusts in partnership with Columbia University to create the National Arts Journalism Program, which offers year-long fellowships for mid-career arts journalists, and more intensive three-month residencies for senior writers in the field.

Clearly there is room for more philanthropic investment in this arena, particularly at the regional level.

In closing, what follows is a list of questions and observations that I presented to the USC Getty fellows during their final session. It's a sort of verbal slide-show of their three-week program and was meant to stimulate further discussion. It might be interesting for grantmakers reading the list to exchange “funder” for “journalist” to see if the answers come clearer.

• At what point in the artistic process should journalists intervene? During a discussion of his work, video artist Bill Viola remarked on how hard it is to write about the experience of art — how often looking at an artwork is like appreciating the outside of a Mac computer without turning it on. He explained that the finished work isn't what's interesting to him, that it's over by then, that what's interesting is to see the ups and downs, the experiments and failures, the journey the artist took. Athol Fugard echoed that sentiment when he expressed his wish that critics could be in the rehearsal room to observe the evolution of a play's performance. Is that a good idea?

• Curator Paul Schimmel walked the fellows through a de Kooning show at MOCA. It was an invigorating experience. His enthusiasm and depth of knowledge brought the work to life in a way that wall labels never could. Is the journalist to the public as the curator is to the artist? What obligation does the journalist have to have the same level of knowledge or expertise as the curator? As an editor or writer, how do you decide if you or your staff has sufficient expertise to cover a story well? And if not, what do you do about it?

• Frank Gehry talked about when to compromise as an artist. He never invests more than 50 percent of his business in one project so that he can always walk away if a client's demands diverge from his own vision or values. What would propel or impede a journalist toward or away from compromise? What would constitute compromise for a journalist?

• During one lively discussion with graduate students at the University of Southern California, one of the fellows posited museums as the place where society sorts what its history is and what's worth preserving, and galleries as the place we decide what is of today. Is journalism of today, or is it more enduring? How and when does it become part of our historical record? How do journalists know if they've been successful? What markers or indicators can they look for? One of the journalists remarked that curators are like stockbrokers, that they get lionized in history for making the right decision. Are journalists the same?

•Throughout the program, the fellows reiterated emphatically that they are only concerned about dialogue, not about selling seats — though one of the journalists mused about how difficult it is to have an open conversation with an arts organization about its finances. In another conversation, theater producer Gordon Davidson talked about the 10 percent margin of an audience who will decide whether or not to attend a show based on a review, and how that margin can make or break a show financially. Has anyone asked, what is journalism's economic impact on the arts? Might there be any relationship between journalism's economic impact and the willingness of arts organization to disclose their finances to reporters?

• Does arts journalism stem from symbiotic or causal relationships? One of the fellows expressed an opinion that journalists should be disinterested observers, that there should be an imaginary wall between writers and the artists they write about. Another fellow dissented, saying that arts journalists should be of the arts community, rubbing shoulders regularly with artists and arts producers. What is journalism's implicit code of ethics? How do all the players — in the arts, at the paper — come to understand the rules and limits of permissible exchange? Where and how does the implicit become explicit — or does it?

• How do the arts relate to other departments of a paper? Is arts coverage more closely related to front page or the opinion/editorials sections? Should arts journalism report news or impute judgment? A seasoned guest writer said that the burden of the craft is to persuade people to read what they need to read. Another guest said that he feels his job is to “trick the reader into experiencing art the same way he did.” Still a third suggested that critics who have stood the test of time are those who have put forward their own point of view — that good criticism is full of personality. How much of one's personal bias should an arts journalist reveal?

• The fellows spoke about the many stakeholders of arts journalism: the artist, arts institution, writer, editor, publisher, informed reader, and uninformed reader. How are the relationships among them constructed? What would a diagram of these relationships look like? To whom, ultimately, are journalists accountable?

Claire Peeps is executive director, Durfee Foundation.