January Issue 2000
Television, Film and Music Dominate as the Media Struggle to Cover Expanding Arts News
National Arts Journalism Program's Groundbreaking Study Analyzes Arts Coverage in 10 Cities, 3 National Dailies, Network News and the Associated Press
Media coverage of television, movies and music dominate arts news at the expense of dance, architecture and the visual arts, and newspapers have come to rely on listings-heavy weekend sections as they struggle to keep pace with America's thriving arts scene.
These are some of the findings of Reporting the Arts, News Coverage of Arts and Culture in America, a research report just released by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University.
In the first comprehensive analysis of how the arts are reported, the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP) has revealed that while newspapers across the US are maintaining a commitment to arts coverage, they do so principally with once- or twice-weekly entertainment sections dense with features and listings. In many newsrooms, arts journalism continues to be a lower priority than other fields such as business and sports. The study also describes battles being waged in many editorial offices as editors and journalists try to define the very nature of arts journalism.
The National Arts Journalism Program's key findings include:
· The arts beat is larger and more heterogeneous
than anticipated. Newspapers frequently mix the high arts with
mass culture and lifestyle coverage such as fashion and design.
· Major expanded weekend supplements showcase arts and
entertainment. Features and reviews are more common than arts
news. The daily section frequently contains little more than television-plus.
· Event listings occupy close to 50 percent of the space
devoted to arts and entertainment in the print media.
· In-house staffing and resources have not been increased
to match a nationwide explosion of arts activity.
· The daily arts and living section lags behind both business
and sports as a priority at almost every newspaper, both in its
allotment of pages and staff.
· The visual arts, architecture, dance and radio receive
only cursory attention. The visual arts are rarely handled by
a full-time staffer. By contrast, television, movies, music and
books are usually heavily covered.
· Newspapers adopt disparate policies for supplementing
their staffers' work with local freelancers and national wire
syndicates.
· Big city newspapers cover the arts in more detail and
in greater diversity than those in smaller cities. Significant
differences also exist in national newspapers' approaches to arts
and cultural news.
· Local museums and major civic not-for-profit institutions
that have mastered the technique of the blockbuster presentation
win prominent coverage, even in competition with the entertainment
industry's publicity machine.
· Network television arts journalism is concentrated in
the morning programs, not nightly newscasts or prime time magazines.
Publishing is the most frequently covered medium, and the book-tour
interview with the author is the dominant format.
With data assembled over the course of one month, Oct. 1998, Reporting the Arts analyzes 15,000 articles. It provides a detailed look at how the arts and culture are handled by 15 local papers in ten metropolitan areas around the country: Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Portland, Providence and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The NAJP study examines how much space is devoted to the arts; how different disciplines rate within each paper; whether the articles were created by critics and reporters or by stringers and the news services; what specific kinds of stories get into the papers-whether they are breaking news about a museum controversy or soft features about a new action movie; and how much newspapers focus on their own backyard.
Reporting the Arts chronicles internal struggles as editors and writers try to balance high art and popular culture, critical and celebrity journalism. An accompanying section includes background on the ten metropolitan areas' major papers and interviews with the publications' editors and critics about their coverage, resources, staffs, budgets and space. In the interviews, the journalists candidly reveal the tensions they have dealing with competition; attracting younger readers; interacting with the entertainment industry publicity machine and arts advocate groups; accommodating multiculturalism; choosing between criticism and arts reporting; and coping with staffing strains and an increasing reliance on part-timers, stringers and news services.
The study also reflects the concerns of arts editors about insufficient resources in the face of growing arts activity and about how they try to achieve comprehensive arts coverage with attention both to the high arts and to popular entertainment. Many admit to following the recommendations of focus groups and questionnaires that seek to uncover the habits and preferences of readers.
Together with the analyses and interviews, Reporting the Arts contains critical overview essays written by journalists active in the various cities, outlining each city's arts and cultural scene, along with an objective analysis of the main papers, alternative presses, magazines, television, radio and web sites.
In addition, the report examines national arts coverage in three contexts: the three national papers-The "New York Times," the "Wall Street Journal" and "USA Today;" network television news and magazine programs, which have generally ignored the arts; and the Associated Press, the source that many newspapers look to for their copy.
Authors of the Report
The 140-page study was conceived and executed by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, with additional research provided by the Center for Arts and Culture in Washington D.C. The primary authors and researchers of the report are: Michael Janeway, NAJP's Director and former editor of the Boston Globe; Daniel S. Levy, author, senior reporter for "TIME" magazine and former NAJP fellow; Andras Szanto, NAJP's associate director and a sociologist of culture and media; and Andrew Tyndall, media researcher and publisher of the Tyndall Report.
The National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP)
Founded in 1994 by The Pew Charitable Trusts and consolidated in 1997 at Columbia University, where it is a part of the Graduate School of Journalism and affiliated with the School of the Arts, the NAJP is the nation's premier center supporting the improvement of arts journalism. The NAJP oversees academic fellowships at Columbia for arts and cultural journalists, along with research, publications and discussions bringing together journalists, news executives, artists, cultural organization administrators, funders and audiences concerned with America's arts and culture. Ten mid-career fellows, supported by stipends of $40,000, spend an academic year at Columbia engaged in a blend of study and work with art organizations. They are joined by senior fellows, who spend shorter periods of time working on writing projects. (Past and present senior fellows have included dance critic Arlene Croce, cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer, and "New York Times" chief art critic Michael Kimmelman.) The NAJP publishes a series of "Occasional Reports" as well as its own journal, "ARTicles", and it hosts conferences and symposia, including "Who Owns Culture?," a major international conference on cultural property held last year.
The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Pew Charitable Trusts support nonprofit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy and religion. Based in Philadelphia, the Trusts make strategic investments to help organizations and citizens develop practical solutions to difficult problems. In 1998, with approximately $4.7 billion in assets, the Trusts granted more than $213 million to 298 nonprofit organizations. The Trusts recently announced a restructuring of their national culture grantmaking. Called "Optimizing America's Cultural Resources," the new, five-year, multimillion-dollar initiative seeks to strengthen nonprofit culture by focusing on the nation's public and private cultural policies. Through research, advocacy and institutional assistance, the Trusts hope to stimulate a vigorous and informed national dialogue about how to preserve and nurture American arts and humanities.
In September, the Trusts approved a three-year, $4.5-million grant to continue the work of the NAJP.
For more information on the NAJP, or copies of Reporting the Arts, News Coverage of Arts and Culture in America, please contact:
Michele Siegel
National Arts Journalism Program
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
New York, NY 10027
Tel.: 212/854-6842 Fax: 212/854-8129 email: najp@columbia.edu
The full report, including detailed summary statistics tables, are posted on the NAJP's web site at (http://www.najp.org).
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