For the Love of Arts Criticism II: Arts Magazines and Bloggers Speak Out

We need more serious, informed, and diverse voices evaluating and reporting on the arts at a time newspapers and magazines are cutting back and/or dumbing down their arts sections.

By Bill Marx

The Arts Fuse has initiated a series of talks on the endangered state of theater and arts criticism. The first session took place on February 26 and dealt with the shrinking of serious arts coverage in the mainstream media: The Boston Globe along with NPR stations WGBH and WBUR. HowlRound videotaped what was a very lively discussion.

The May 7th evening will focus on exploring on the value of small arts magazines in the Boston area. It will also examine ways in which they can be supported at a challenging time for independent arts journalism. Among the participants: Greg Cook of Wonderland, Franklin Einspruch of Delicious Line, the visual arts magazine, Jason Pramas, Executive Editor and Associate Publisher of Dig Boston and Network Director for the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, folk from Boston Hassle, perhaps arts editor Chloé DuBois, arts critic Heather Kapplow, Pat Williams of The Word Boston, Dave Ortega of Somerville Media Center, Lucas Spivey of Mobile Incubator, Christine Varriale, Editor-in-Chief at the online music magazine Allston Pudding, and Chanel Thervil of Big Red & Shiny. Admittance is free.

The session will be divided into two parts. First, there will be a round robin discussion among small arts magazine editors, bloggers, and writers. Why are these publications valuable? Then a brainstorming confab will follow, charged with coming up with ways that online publications can support each other — sharing readers and resources, opportunities for syndication — as well looking into how a network of small online magazines and bloggers might be able to band together to apply for grants and other funding resources.

For decades, the city’s alternative press played a crucial role in raising the bar for provocative cultural coverage. These publications supported new, experimental, and marginal artists and also dissented from the sanitized political/commercial platitudes pushed by mainstream newspapers and magazines. We need more serious, informed, and diverse voices evaluating and reporting on the arts at a time newspapers and magazines are cutting back and/or dumbing down their arts sections. Please come and be part of this important conversation.

Here is the Facebook event page link.

Bill Marx is the editor-in-chief of The Arts Fuse. For over three decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast, and online. He has regularly reviewed theater for National Public Radio Station WBUR and The Boston Globe. He created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. In 2007 he created The Arts Fuse, an online magazine dedicated to covering arts and culture in Boston and throughout New England.