October 9, 2018
For Immediate Release
THE ARTS FUSE CELEBRATES 5,000TH ARTICLE, A NEW SITE DESIGN, LAUNCH OF A NEW PODCAST, AND CONTINUING DEVELOPMENT OF ITS MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
BOSTON, MA: The Arts Fuse, Boston’s online arts magazine, has published its 5,000th article and redesigned its web site with a new design to help readers better find and navigate its thousands of reviews, previews, commentary, and interviews.
“The Arts Fuse continues to grow stronger each month,” states Editor-in-Chief Bill Marx. Unlike traditional media, we don’t have printing presses, delivery trucks, TV or radio studios or satellite dishes, a central office, or all the costs that go with them. Our revenue comes from underwriting/advertising, reader donations, grants, and major gifts and all our income can go directly to paying our writers and growing our readership. Unlike traditional media, The Arts Fuse is very lean and efficient.”
Since the site began publishing in July 2007, The Arts Fuse has increased editorial coverage of the arts and culture in Boston with in-depth criticism, coming attractions, interviews, and commentary covering dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. While many in the arts and culture realm have worried, “what is the future of the arts coverage?” The Arts Fuse has continued growing the online magazine and has had people in cities like Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco ask, “Can you publish an online magazine like The Arts Fuse here?”
Started in reaction to the declining arts coverage in daily and weekly newspapers, monthly magazines, radio, and television, Marx began The Arts Fuse as a nonprofit organization that could experiment with professional online arts criticism, looking at new and innovative ways to use online platforms to evolve the conversation and bring together critics, readers, and artists.
For more than two decades, Marx wrote about arts and culture for print, broadcast, and online media outlets including WBUR, WGBH, NPR, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Phoenix. Marx has also contributed essay-reviews to a variety of national publications, including Parnassus, Ploughshares, Washington Post Book World, The Nation, The Boston Review, The Los Angeles Times, the Columbia Journalism Review, and The Village Voice. Marx won United Press International and Associated Press awards for his radio reviews of Boston theater. He has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Reviewer’s Citation three times.
The Arts Fuse has become the home for more than 50 contributing writers, critics, and editors across New England, including Debra Cash (The Boston Globe, WBUR), Harvey Blume (The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired, Agni), Franklin Einspruch (The New Criterion, The Weekly Dig, Big Red & Shiny), Helen Epstein (author of six books of literary non-fiction), Steve Elman (The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, WBUR), Jon Garelick (former Arts Editor at The Boston Phoenix) and Gerald Peary (former film critic for The Boston Phoenix and author of 9 books on cinema), among many others.
The Arts Fuse has also helped elevate some of New England’s rising stars in arts writing, including Jonathan Blumhofer (composer and violist), Adam Ellsworth (YNE Magazine, Online Music Reviews, Metronome Review, Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Wakefield Patch), Grace Dane Mazur (author of Hinges: Meditations on the Portals of the Imagination), and Ian Thal (performer and theatre educator, The Jewish Advocate, The Clyde Fitch Report), among many others.
The Arts Fuse’s spring appeal was successful and we are preparing our winter appeal for donors who want to make a tax-deductible donation to use on their 2018 tax return.
About The Arts Fuse
The Arts Fuse was started by Editor in Chief Bill Marx in June 2007 and currently has more than 60 contributing writers, critics, and reporters from across New England. Marx is an award-winning critic from his work at WBUR, WGBH, NPR, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, Parnassus, Ploughshares, Washington Post Book World, the Nation, the Boston Review, The Los Angeles Times, the Columbia Journalism Review, and The Village Voice. For more information, visit https://live-arts-fuse.pantheonsite.io or follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook, or our entry on Wikipedia.
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