Author: Douglas McLennan

LA Philharmonic: How To Change The Center Of Gravity Of Programming?

“One of the big things that we’re trying to do this season,“ Chief Executive Chad Smith said, “is really advance this idea that Gustavo has been initiating for so long, which is to shift the musical center of gravity for our art form further west and further south. We come from an art form which historically was European and largely male. How do we, over time, change that?“ – Los Angeles Times

Critic Philosopher George Steiner, 92

He was what many people call a human encyclopedia—not in the American sense, a blank vault of facts, but in the French Enlightenment one: a critical repository of significant knowledge. His long book reviews for this magazine, written over thirty years, from 1966 to 1997, were dotted with allusions of the kind that a naturally horizontal thinker couldn’t help but include. But they were never imposed or forced—his mind truly, on its way to Borges, passed through Sophocles and stopped for a moment to take in the view at Heidegger. Steiner was a lifelong traveller of those routes. – The New Yorker

What Ails The BBC

“The BBC needs more than simply defending in its current state, as if any criticism will render it only more helpless in the face of a hostile government. If the BBC is to survive the mid-term review of the Royal Charter in 2022, let alone charter renewal in 2027, it will have to face up to its faults and make some radical changes without giving ground to some of the more specious claims of its opponents.” – London Review of Books

This Year’s Oscars Are Shaping Up To Be A Disaster

In the year 2020 when there are SO MANY movies and, with Netflix and Amazon entering the Oscar conversation, no excuse not to watch them, people should feel more invested in these awards than ever. It should be a watershed moment for the annual awards season. That there’s been no capitalization on, finally, a non-industry person’s access into the debate after so many years of the “who cares about the Oscars?” refrain is the most damning disaster of the whole thing.  – The Daily Beast

Polarized News Is Hurting Advertising Revenues

Just 9 of the most 100 most-read news articles from 2019 were considered brand safe by keywords blacklists, per the study. Often many words are blocked in fear of one meaning, but then are misapplied. For example, words like “attack” are often included in blacklists, even it it pertains to something positive, like an “attack wing” in soccer. – Axios