The announcement that ArtsGreensboro, the service organization serving that North Carolina community, will be funding arts coverage in the Greensboro News & Record, is being portrayed as something akin to sponsorship of public radio programming.

Writing in that newspaper, ArtsGreensboro President and CEO Thomas Philion writes:

Inspired by arts supporters who understood these realities, ArtsGreensboro invited the News & Record to explore how we might work together to increase arts coverage, including bringing back reviews of theater, dance, music and exhibitions.

The result is an innovative agreement similar to the underwriting model for public broadcasting. The News & Record maintains its editorial independence, while ArtsGreensboro helps make that expanded coverage possible — with no strings attached.

In turn, Jeff Gauger, News & Record executive editor and publisher, writes:

 In our agreement, the News & Record has committed to publishing at least 70 stories about local arts topics during the next year. That’s 70 more stories than we would have published without this agreement.

I have no doubt that at the outset, everyone is going into this with the very best of intentions. Gauger addresses the potential for conflict, and conflict of interest, in a communication with journalism watchdog Jim Romanesko:

Of course we’ll cover ArtsGreensboro aggressively where our news values dictate that we must, even if the organization doesn’t welcome some of the coverage.

We’ve long been able to negotiate the occasional expectation from advertisers that doing business with us should create a safe zone for them. This is different only insofar as the underwriting support pays for news coverage directly while advertising support for journalism is one step removed. But the potential need to act independently in the face of complaints and even financial consequences would be no different in this case, given the right future circumstances.

I have a lot of questions, largely rhetorical, since it will take time for this new paradigm to play out.

1. Why has the News & Record been unable to do the arts coverage they’d like to do? I don’t know the paper, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they are not in conversation with any sports foundation to underwrite their athletic coverage. Are there other areas where their coverage has been diminished or eliminated and it will only be restored or expanded with support from an outside entity? Have the arts been singled out as uniquely disposable?

2. The public radio comparison seems a false equivalency, since the News & Record is a for-profit company. In fact, it’s owned, per Romanesko, by Warren Buffett. Instead of being comparable to foundation sponsorship of public radio programming, this is almost tantamount to ArtsGreensboro paying for “advertorial” space without control of what is said. In that sense, it’s a peculiar variant of “native advertising,” advertising that looks like actual editorial content, which is being explored by countless print outlets.

When The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports science programming on NPR (as I recall from many an on-air credit), they aren’t funding coverage of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The relationship at the News & Record is much more direct between funder and subject.

3. What if ArtsGreenboro, at some future date, experiences a funding problem, and can no longer sustain this underwriting? Does that mean the 70 pieces of arts reportage secured during the term of this first agreement will evaporate if the funding goes, and that journalists hired, full-time or freelance, will suddenly find themselves without work? The articles suggest that it was ArtsGreenboro who proposed this solution, so would the News & Record seek to replace that funding should it be lost, in order to maintain this new coverage?

4. Isn’t it possible that this plan will say to other newspapers, “Hey, you know that esoteric arts coverage? Those pages that generate very little advertising as compared with, say, the automotive section? Maybe someone will pay us to keep it in our paper. It worked in Greensboro.”? It’s not as if arts coverage isn’t already diminished across the country, so it would be easy for others to ape the Greensboro model.

5. I know from long experience that arts organizations generally have a bone to pick with their local critics, and often feature writers as well (I’m not validating this, just observing). What if the constituent organizations don’t like the quality or nature of the coverage they receive? What if some still feel left out? Even if the entities remain independent, couldn’t this lead to a brinksmanship situation where the arts might consider pulling their funding because the reportage simply isn’t up to snuff? But in doing so, will they then seal the fate of any future arts coverage?

6. If this arrangement is to be transparent to readers, arts organizations and other members of the media, has the cost of this sponsorship been made public? None of the pieces cited above make any mention of a price tag. I think that would be extremely informative, even if it did serve to provoke a new round of questions.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely want to see more and better arts coverage in all media, not just print. But the idea that journalism should be funded by the people and companies being covered seems contradictory to the very notion of an independent press, no matter how many “Chinese wall” or “church and state” metaphors you throw at it. If newspapers want outside funding in order to supplement the resources and insure the breadth of the reportage, perhaps they should consider becoming not-for-profit organizations themselves (this model does exist).

Is the arrangement between the News & Record and ArtsGreensboro an inspired solution to restore and preserve arts coverage, or has it just put that very coverage in major media on a slippery slope where money must change hands in order for the arts to be worthy of journalistic attention? Yes, I’m a skeptic. I hope my many fears are proven wrong.

I am going to take it for granted that, since you’ve opted to read this article, you care about the arts. I’m also going to save time and typing by assuming that you appreciate media coverage of the arts and that you realize that without the attention of the media, it will be ever harder for the arts to share their news, their work and their value locally, nationally and internationally.

Since we are agreed, I will proceed directly to my point.

If you want to see intelligent, comprehensive coverage of the arts – features and reviews alike – then you’ve got to start clicking. Journalism is well on its way to being a numbers game for most outlets. How many people clicked on a story or video, how many times was it liked or shared, how much time was spent looking at it? We are already seeing journalism sites paying writers base salaries with bumps or bonuses based on online metrics; outlets say they are dropping certain types of coverage because it’s simply not generating enough traffic. It’s not enough to be happy that arts coverage exists, you have to actually engage with it to insure its survival and the job survival of those who create it.

Clicks mean eyes and eyes mean advertisers. As print becomes an ever-harder sell, online advertising grows ever more important to outlets. Even back in the days pre-internet, I encountered cuts in arts coverage because the arts didn’t generate enough advertising revenue (whereas advertisers loved sports sections and we get regular features about new cars because auto dealers buy big ads). Even now, arts spending online is a small sliver of online advertising, so our best means of supporting arts coverage is by actually reading it.

Let’s face it: anyone with a WordPress blog knows how many people read each piece they post (yes, I’m watching you). But that’s amateur hour compared to the realtime and cumulative algorithms and analytics applied at big media outlets. There are teams of people looking at clicks, links and likes for every story, and media empires are being built on click-bait methodology (why, hello BuzzFeed). It’s running the show in many places and it can’t be ignored.

So here’s what I propose. Every morning, when you get online, go to the arts section of your local media outlets, seek out their arts and entertainment stories, and click of them. Don’t click on each in rapid succession, but spend 30 to 45 seconds on each one (remember your multiple browser windows). You have to wait a bit because one analytic is stickiness or hang-time or whatever it’s called now, namely whether people are really engaging with coverage. A click on and immediate click off looks like you got there by mistake. And needless to say, it certainly won’t hurt in the least if you actually read a story or watch a video while you’re at it.

I should also note that just liking or retweeting a story isn’t enough: you actually have to look at it. Sometimes you’re just liking a friend posting about a story, not the story or video itself, and that’s an important difference. There have been studies that show that many people retweet items without ever actually reading them, and anecdotally I know that to be true: I often see my own tweets with embedded links that have more retweets than clicks. You’ve got to stop and look. That said, on Facebook likes and shares feed into an algorithm that’s sure more people might see the post featured in their feed, and retweets do the same, so be liberal with those too.

You need to share this idea with your staffs, your audience, your donors. This can’t be an effort by a couple of thousand core die-hards; this has to be a movement and it has to be sustained. I do my part every day in curating the articles I share on my twitter feed. You don’t need to be as exhaustive as I am, but whether you seek out a story or if it comes across your social media feed, click on it (often click on opera and symphony stories even though I rarely attend them). If the arts generate eyes, if they generate numbers, you’re going to have a direct impact on how the arts are viewed by the media decision makers. Clicking on the occasional ad next to an arts story matters too.

I’d like to give this idea some snappy name that the field can adopt, but I’m only coming up with corny and possibly inexplicable ideas like “Click 10 For The Arts,” which in my mind is shorthand for remind you to click on 10 arts stories daily. I hope that if people buy into this idea, someone will come up with something clever.

But unlike the world of journalism 25 years ago, where outlets only knew how many papers they sold, it’s now exceedingly easy to know what gets traffic and what doesn’t. No need for audience surveys when our every move online is recorded. If we don’t actively work to pump up the stats for arts coverage, it’ll continue to erode.

To quote Joni Mitchell, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone,” and we’ve lost too much already. So next time you want to take a quiz about what Shakespeare villain or what Sondheim character you are, at least spend the equivalent amount of time reading articles about Shakespeare plays or Sondheim shows. Because while the former may be fun, it’s the latter that will actually sustain arts journalism and sustain the arts.

P.S. Thanks for clicking on this story. Now would you be so kind to like it, favorite it, share it, retweet it and so on? And yes, I’ll know if you did.

Fact: America’s newspapers are locked in a struggle for survival, fighting for financial stability and relevance at a time when money and attention increasingly focuses on online and video outlets.

Fact: Philadelphia’s newspapers are locked in a singularly ugly battle for survival, because after several instances of ownership turnover in recent years, the Inquirer and Daily News are now owned by a partnership in which the partners are suing one another over control of the business.

Fact: While newsroom cuts are the norm at papers across the country, and arts positions are being lost everywhere, Philadelphia is the largest city in the country which does not have a full-time theatre critic on staff at its daily newspapers, despite an array of professional theatre production in the city and surrounding area.

I lay these items out as preface for consideration of a single theatre review (which I hope you’ll read in its entirety), Toby Zinman’s Inquirer critique of the Arden Theatre Company’s production of Water By The Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the play which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This review has been the subject of a great deal of online comment as a result of a blog post on a site called “Who Criticizes The Critic?” The essay itself is “Critical Case Study #1: A Brutal Lack of Investment,” written by a pseudonymous author identified only as “criticcrusader.”

Armando Batista & Maia Desanti in Water By The Spoonful at Arden Theatre Company (Photo: Mark Garvin)

As the blog post circulated on Twitter and Facebook this past week – though it and the review are from late January – I saw a range of responses, from many who applauded the critique and from some who took issue with its legitimacy because of the anonymity of the author. I initially chose not to share it on social media because I’m troubled by criticism, let alone attacks, by unnamed voices on the internet. But I kept returning to the original review, and the critique of it, repeatedly. Then, by coincidence, I saw Hudes’ The Happiest Song Plays Last over the weekend at Second Stage, which brought the review to mind yet again; Song is the final piece in a trilogy of which Spoonful is part two.

I feel compelled to weigh in on Zinman’s review not because I make a habit of critiquing critics, but because I think her piece repeatedly crosses professional boundaries, in terms of what theatre, and all of the arts, should hope for from those who are paid to critique them, especially by major media outlets, even wounded ones. I know I’m echoing “Critical Case Study #1,” but I hope a bit more dispassionately. Those who discount “criticcrusader” for writing under an alias can make no such charge at me.

For transparency: though I went to college in Philly, I haven’t worked professionally in the city in 30 years, save for moderating some talks at the Philadelphia Theatre Company and doing some site visits for The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. I do not know Toby Zinman or her editor Rebecca Klock. I have never attended the Arden Theatre and so I did not see this production. I cannot recall having ever spoken with the company’s leaders, though it’s possible I did at some point in the past.

And so.

It seems that the least we can hope for from a critic, whether staff or freelance, whether well-compensated or paid the pittance that is the shameful norm for most freelancers, is an informed opinion. Since Spoonful has received one of the highest awards given in theatre, it is not unreasonable to expect a critic to have a basic knowledge of that pre-existing work before attending it. Zinman has a Ph.D. in theatre and has written several books on the subject; she also teaches English at Philadelphia’s School of the Arts. She is far from a novice. Yet of Water By The Spoonful, Zinman writes:

“I imagined it might be about the global water crisis:

Consider the recent chemical tainting of residential water in West Virginia. Consider the drought and raging wild fires in California. Consider that more than 1.2 billion people on earth now live without a reliable source of fresh water.”

Why is this in a review? Even if Zinman elected to remain wholly ignorant of the work, what is the relevance of her musings on the title? Our water crisis is a perfectly legitimate concern, but it has nothing to do with the play. Print space is limited in any paper, so why use precious column inches on an irrelevant topic? Her aside accounts for more than 10% of the word total of the review.

“This play is about a bunch of crack addicts who do awful things and are, with the exception of Hudes’ recurring character Elliot, utterly boring and unsympathetic characters.”

In only the second paragraph of the review, Zinman has dismissed several drug-addicted characters as unsympathetic, without making any effort to explain why. Are struggling drug addicts, in fiction or in life, merely to be written off for their failings? As a central element of the story, this deserves as least as much space as the world’s water problems.

“Presumably, part of the script’s interest for Philadelphia audiences would be the local place-references, but mentioning Jefferson Hospital doesn’t redeem the play for me.”

Sure, audience members at the Arden might experience the odd frisson over hearing the name of a place they know mentioned, but given the productions the play has received in other cities, its locale seems hardly central to its existence or any production. To suggest it is only produced in Philadelphia because of its Philadelphia ties is callously dismissive.

“Yazmin (Maia Desanti) is the sanctimonious rich white girl who is, in ways I couldn’t follow, Elliot’s cousin/romantic interest/best friend.”

Yazmin is very clearly a Latina character. Zinman’s definition of her as “white” involves judging her based solely on the skin tone of the actress playing the role, ignoring any context within the play. Does Zinman doubt that individuals of differing skin colors can be related?

As with any critic, Zinman has every right to dislike the play. She has every right to dislike the production. But the reader has the right to expect some level of rationale for each, or for that matter a distinction between the two. From the review, it is impossible to know the source of Zinman’s poor opinion, save for her calling out of two lines which we can infer she finds wanting, and her mention of a slow pace. She neglects any mention of the physical production. Reading the review gives me the impression that Zinman was annoyed by the whole experience of seeing this play, and made no effort to engage with the play on its own terms.

The Philadelphia theatre scene has increased enormously since my days as a Penn student, filled with theatres and options that didn’t exist 30 years ago. While I will be the first to say that critics have zero responsibility for promoting or selling work for theatres, I think, and I hope most critics would agree, that theatres are deserving of reviews and critiques that adhere to professional standards, regardless of the hardships of the professional outlets that publish them. In my estimation, this review by Zinman fails, but the failing is not hers alone. Did her editor ask her for clarification of her points or suggest excising the extraneous? While presumably copy editors aren’t acting as fact checkers, the erroneous assertion about a character’s race could have been easily clarified by numerous online sources, let alone the readily available script.

As a blogger, I have no editor, no copy editor, no fact checker. I am solely responsible for the accuracy of what I write, and my integrity rests on that. At a professional newspaper, there are ostensibly more checks and balances, but – in my opinion – they failed in this case, in a way that no mere correction can erase or excuse. It calls into serious question the accuracy and validity of this critic’s voice in this case; I do not believe that this is emblematic of the state of theatre criticism nationally, which I value as an arts professional. But The Arden and its production, as well as Hudes’s play, deserve better than they got in terms of fair consideration of their work, regardless of whether the show was liked or not.

On a final note: this review follows on the heels of a very thoughtful piece on the role of a theatre critic by another freelance Inquirer critic, Wendy Rosenfield, writing for the Broad Street Review, in which she speaks of her support for “Theater that widens and deepens the scope of our regional scene.” I applaud that sentiment, but would like to paraphrase it, because Philadelphia – and all communities – deserve journalism that widens and deepens the scope of the city’s arts scene too. The two go hand in hand.

Update March 4, 11:30 am: As this post has circulated online, Jason Zinoman of The New York Times expressed his feelings that if I claim to be someone who believes in mutual respect between arts organizations and arts critics, I had failed to demonstrate it in this piece, by not sufficiently disavowing the tone, language and certain sentiments employed by the anonymous “criticcrusader.” It was my intention that the tone and content of my piece represented my approach to such dialogue, but I was indeed not explicit. Should anyone doubt my commitment to mutually respectful dialogue, let me make clear that the piece by “criticcrusader” was harsh, hyperbolic and unnecessarily personal, hardly the tone to be adopted when attempting to lobby for more considered and accurate writing; the anonymity is counterproductive as well. The thoughts in my piece, which may overlap with the earlier essay, are my own and I stand by them; however, to have not acknowledged what prompted me to write would have been dishonest.