Sunday, June 3, 2007

If I ran the NY Times...

I'd start an op-ed page for the arts in the A&L section.

9 comments:

Leonard Jacobs said...

Would you seriously? What would the purpose be? I'm completely serious in my question.

Ludlow Lad said...

Great question. I'd scale advertising rates based on the number of seats in a theater.

Leonard Jacobs said...

I'd totally favor scaling advertising rates, but the first step is to differentiate between nonprofit and commercial productions, and Bway, OB and OOB. Equity could be fighting for that right now, but they're hardly moving on the question of how to reform the Showcase Code.

parabasis said...

The same purpose of an OP-ED in the politics section... you have journalism, you have reviews... there needs to be a real organized space for commentary on the arts written by people who don't work at the Times. I'd be interested in what, say Vallejo Gantner has to say about NY THeatre after a couple of years, or what Steve Reich thinks about New Music these days etc.

Freeman said...

Jesus Christ. I really want to drink more.

Leonard Jacobs said...

Unfortunately I don't think the New York Times is the place for that at this time. I think maybe 50 years ago, when there were daily critics and Sunday critics and a sense of history and analysis, there could have been something like that. Ideally, there would be culture magazines of a stature in society where such commentaries could flourish. The general public doesn't give a fig what Vallejo Gantner thinks of New York theatre. They should, be they don't. Many of us do. The question in my view what vehicle can be used to furnisht those kinds of views. Say, a blog.

Leonard Jacobs said...

Unfortunately I don't think the New York Times is the place for that at this time. I think maybe 50 years ago, when there were daily critics and Sunday critics and a sense of history and analysis, there could have been something like that. Ideally, there would be culture magazines of a stature in society where such commentaries could flourish. The general public doesn't give a fig what Vallejo Gantner thinks of New York theatre. They should, be they don't. Many of us do. The question in my view what vehicle can be used to furnisht those kinds of views. Say, a blog.

Ludlow Lad said...

I'd also have more "critics" - it would be cool to get more than one opinion per show.

Leonard Jacobs said...

Multiple critics, absolutely. You know there were once 14 papers in New York. Everyone thinks the NYTimes has had everyone blowing them forever, but there was a time when the, er, blowing was much more spread, er, around.