It finds that news consumers are more trusting of the media—and more secure about their own ability to discern the truth—when they are exposed to a combination of fact-checking articles and opinion pieces arguing for the importance of journalism. “When one side attacks over and over again, and the other doesn’t respond, at some point people assume that journalists have conceded the point that they’re biased.” – Pacific Standard
Author: Douglas McLennan
Seattle Opera Has A New Home
The 105,000-square-foot building, at Mercer Street and Fourth Avenue North next to McCaw Hall, is designed to allow people to take a peek behind the scenes, with walls of glass allowing the public to see performances and lectures in progress, and a viewing garden where people can watch those at work in the costume shop. – Seattle Times
Walmart Buys Art.com
Initially Art.com will operate independently as a standalone company, but the announcement states that soon Art.com’s collection of two million images ranging from posters to limited-edition prints on paper and canvas, as well as frames, wall décor and custom framing services for uploaded photographs, will be added to the Walmart.com, Jet.com and Hayneedle.com sites. – Forbes
My Challenges: Mental Illness And Theatre
Jacob Juntunen: “Being a mentally ill theatremaker comes with its own specific challenges. Different mental illnesses require different care, but the majority are exacerbated by lack of routine, insufficient sleep, alcohol use, lack of access to health care, and undue stress—all elements of most theatre careers. Mental illnesses are chronic, requiring a redefinition of self after diagnosis, a lifetime of management, and the navigation of a complicated healthcare system.” – Howlround
Detroit Symphony Executive Director Anne Parsons In Treatment For Lung Cancer
In a Dec. 5 email to board members, musicians, staff and donors, the DSO announced that Parsons is being treated at Henry Ford Health System with a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. The email described Parsons as a “lifelong non-smoker.” – The Detroit News
Prominent UK Musicians Write Letter Urging Canceling Brexit
The letter, published by the Music4EU initiative, describes Brexit as a “significant threat” to the country’s music industry, adding: “Leaving the EU’s customs union, single market, VAT area and regulatory framework (in whole or part) could devastate our global market leadership, and damage our freedom to trade, tour and to promote our artists and our works.” Concerns are also voiced over access to foreign markets and regulation over copyright, before a request to “examine alternative options to maintain our current influence and freedom to trade”. – The Guardian
The MFA Degree-As-Fraud
We are a long way from late-19th-century Paris, where “academic painting” signified technically dazzling neoclassical figures, lush but sterile, and where the brutal disruptions of Manet and the Impressionists were consigned to the “Salon des Refusés.” Beauty within the academies, scandal without. Today these positions are reversed, and the academic institutions that serve as gatekeepers for the art world praise the conceptual, the alienating, and the abstract while disparaging craftsmanship as “merely” pretty and “merely” illustrative — and a sure sign of political quietism. – Chronicle of Higher Education
Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre A Cautionary Tale For Regional Theatre?
Liverpool’s plight is a reminder of just how close to the edge many regional theatres are operating and how perilously near many are to breaching their NPO agreements. As one leading industry insider put it to me: “There are many canaries in cages coughing, if not yet falling off their perches.” As with Liverpool, it wouldn’t take all that much to knock them off, and when one tumbles – particularly one as big as Liverpool – the fear is that more may follow. – The Stage
What We Learned About Making Good Plays: “We Don’t Care If They’re Any Good” (At Least For Awhile)
“What we learned working on Sinan’s play, and several others at that time, completely changed our DNA. We learned that the pressure of rushing to production forced us to take safer approaches and to marginalise the most important visionary of all, the writer.” After Pera Palas, the Lark changed its approach. “We became what I like to call a ‘rehearsal company’. We would be a play lab, a think tank for theatre.” – The Stage
Truth: It Probably Doesn’t Matter Where You Go To College
The seemingly obvious answer is, Of course it matters! How could it not? Ivy League and equivalent institutions provide more than world-class instruction. They confer a lifetime of assistance from prodigiously connected alumni and a message to all future employers that you’re a rarified talent. College isn’t just an education; it’s a network, a signal, and an identity. But what appears obvious may not be true. – The Atlantic