Apple News+ threatens to open a massive hole in news site paywalls, allowing their best premium articles to escape. Publishers hope they’ll get exposure to new audiences. But any potential new or existing direct subscriber to a publisher will no longer be willing to pay a healthy monthly fee to occasionally access that top content while supporting the rest of the newsroom. – TechCrunch
Author: Douglas McLennan
Berlin’s Staatsoper Struggles With Its Barenboim Issue
A person who thinks of Daniel Barenboim solely as an artist might be tempted to explain or excuse his behavior: as a result of the “Latin-American blood in my body” (his, rather offensive, words) or a tortured genius’s quest for perfection. As a manager, however, he has a clear responsibility toward his employees, both musicians and administrators. A good leader honors boundaries and takes setbacks in stride. Barenboim appears to struggle with both. – Van
Local News Is Collapsing In America
In a previous world, perhaps one could imagine that a million bloggers would spring up to fill the void left by all the actual reporting jobs disappearing, but that clearly did not and is not going to happen. The explosion of national digital-only news outlets has come and gone. Many survive, but few do the kind of journalism that local papers did. It’s one thing to tweet from a city council meeting every once in a while, and a whole other thing to cover City Hall for a real newspaper. – The Atlantic
Open Call: This Museum Could Be Yours If You Have A Great Idea For It
The Autry will put out a call for proposals for the “revitalization and creative reuse” of L.A.’s oldest museum, a 12-acre campus near the Mount Washington-Highland Park border, plus the museum’s nearby adobe building, a 1917 replica of a Spanish California ranch house from the 19th century. – Los Angeles Times
Singer At Royal Albert Hall Told To Change Her Pro-EU Dress Before Concert
The British soprano Anna Patalong donned the yellow-and-blue outfit, along with a necklace of gold stars redolent of the EU flag, for a Classical Spectacular performance on Saturday after taking part in the anti-Brexit march in London earlier in the day. However, she changed back into a red dress worn for previous performances for Sunday’s concert following a request by the concert’s producer, Raymond Gubbay. – The Guardian
Two Very Different Australian Productions Of “West Side Story” Spark Debate About Clashing Cultures
The two productions are emblematic of a broader shift in the industry as a whole: one that is trying to be more thoughtful and inclusive, but is still dominated by old habits and modes of thought under a predominantly white, male leadership. – The Guardian
Large Rallies Against Sweeping New EU Copyright Law
Munich police said 40,000 protesters turned out under the motto “Save our internet.” Organizers said Berlin’s protest (pictured above) drew 30,000, with participants walking past the center of Germany’s collaborative Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Police put the number of protesters at 10,000. – Deutsche Welle
EU Passes Sweeping New Copyright Law. It Will Change The Very Nature Of The Internet
Under the law, internet platforms will be liable for content that users upload, a burden that will fall heavily on some of the most popular online services. Years in the making, the EU Copyright Directive has been heavily debated and divisive among politicians, as well as a cause of concern for the tech industry. One part of the proposal in particular — Article 13, which will govern the way copyrighted content is uploaded to the internet — has many in the tech community throwing their hands up in despair. – CNET
They Say Blockchain Is Going To Revolutionize The Publishing Business. Is This Just Hype?
Perhaps not since the advent of the internet itself has a single technology buzzword captured the imagination of so many. Book publishing is no exception: a growing number of startup companies, people in existing companies, and investors are touting the promise of blockchain technology for publishing. Meanwhile, skeptics say that blockchain cannot possibly live up to all the hype. – Publishers Weekly
The Point Of Art? Not To “Save” Us (But It Can)
Christian Wiman: If there’s a poem that works for me, it’s showing me something of reality. It’s more than that, actually: it’s enabling me to participatein reality again. John Berger has a wonderful essay about looking at the paintings of Van Gogh when he’s in despair and saying that suddenly reality had been salvaged. That’s the word he uses. That’s often what I feel when I come across poetry that I love, that reality’s been salvaged for me. And reality does have to be salvaged for us, all of us, again and again. – New Criterion