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Poetry “Watchdog Website Shuts Down

“This week the poetry world is atwitter over the closing down of an Internet site that for the last year dedicated itself to exposing what it calls fraud among the small circle of poetry contests that frequently offer publishing contracts as prizes. Alan Cordle, a research librarian who lives in Portland, Ore., has managed the Web site, www.foetry.com, anonymously since its inception a little more a year ago. He called his site the “American poetry watchdog” and aimed to expose the national poetry contests that he said “are often large-scale fraud operations” in which judges select their friends and students as winners.”

British Recording Industry Tallies Illegal Downlod Losses

The British recording industry has lost hundreds of millions to illegal downloading in the past two years. “The British Phonographic Industry said record labels lost £376m last year – up nearly £100m on the £278m they lost the year before – in the music business’s first attempt to quantify the financial cost of illegal downloads. A two-year study by research group TNS showed that music fans would have spent £1.5bn on recorded music between 2002-2004, but because of downloads spent only £858m.”

The New Walker, Brought To You By…

“There are a lot of good things you can say about the [Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center’s] reopening–not the least of which is that it has reopened. This past Walker-less winter was a reminder of just how much a world-class arts institution adds to the life of our little metropolis; without it, Minneapolis might as well be Houston. And it’s worth mentioning that, with a price tag of a mere $70 million… the Walker’s new addition was a relative steal. [But] everything in this new wing seems to be sponsored by some corporation or another. You walk from the General Mills Lounge to the Best Buy Arcade to the U.S. Bank Orientation Lounge. In its proliferation of corporate sponsorship, the Walker is less MoMA than [Mall Of America].”

Will Toronto Arts Be On The Chopping Block For Conservatives?

Canada’s ruling Liberal government is in trouble, hanging on to power by a thread and likely to be forced into new elections by year’s end. And while Prime Minister Paul Martin and company might have many residents of Canada’s largest city exasperated, Martin Knelman warns that an electoral victory for the Conservative party and its leader, Alberta’s Stephen Harper, would be a death knell for Toronto’s arts scene. “Alberta’s well-known resentment of Toronto’s presumed cultural superiority could find expression in a big chill for local arts funding.”

The Ushering Game

How can you see all the theatre you want without spending a cent? Just show a few people to their seats, stuff a few Playbills, and wait for the lights to go down. Welcome to the world of New York’s Off-Broadway volunteer ushers, a strange and wacky collection of eccentrics, elderly fans on a budget, and hypercompetitive prima donnas.

Is Papyrus “Breakthrough” Credible?

Last weekend London’s Independent newspaper published a story telling of a major brakthrough in deciphering a trove of ancient texts. The story smells fishy to other papyrus researchers. “As of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up for disavow the claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent’s reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they’re trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news.”