Category: issues

“For one naive, shining moment in the ’90s, the assumption was that on the Web, popularity would be democratic, earned one enthusiastic click at a time. Pure. Simple. Untainted by Billboard, Hollywood, Nielsen or other mainstream media usual suspects. But that was before clicks meant cash, and before a flood of tools and communities brought millions of new, mainly nonprofessional content providers online, jostling to get their videos watched, audio clips downloaded and blogs and Web pages linked to bigger, more popular blogs and websites.” Now the name of the game is gaming the system.

New plans envision a forest of towers that would dwarf the city’s iconic TransAmerica tower. The plan “envisions a cluster of thin towers rising from 2 acres at the northwest corner of First and Mission streets. The cluster would include two 1,200-foot towers, two 900-foot structures and a 600-foot companion.” The project is “the focus of a skyscraper design competition seeking what the guidelines describe as ‘an iconic presence that will redefine the city’s skyline.’ As many as a half-dozen teams are rumored to be putting together bids.”

Jonathan Green changed careers, going from being a conductor to being an administrator at a college. “My discipline is music with a specialization in conducting. The longer I have served in administration, the more I believe my conducting training has provided me with the most valuable preparation for my current career.”

Nara Schoenberg resents those stores that ask you to donate money to charity at the checkout. She prefers to give to charities of her own choosing. “Am I the only customer who is put off by the growing number of verbal requests for donations at the register this holiday season, with everyone from Borders to Babies “R” Us getting in on the action?”

“A group of US record labels has started legal action against Russian music download site Allofmp3.com… The record labels say the sites are selling songs without permission. But Allofmp3.com argues it is paying royalties to a Russian licensing body. The music industry says that the Russian licensing group does not have the authority to collect and distribute royalties.”

Lee Siegel is something of a legend among critics – a blunt, no-holds-barred assessor of other people’s talent and worth, working in an era when most critics restrict themselves to polite asides and gentle rebukes. So it’s not a surprise that Siegel harbors some pretty dark views of the cultural scene in general, using a new book to rail against “an art world obsessed with money; business-savvy cultural producers out for a buck and little else; and a complacent review corps backing the whole thing up by issuing bland, rubber-stamped judgments.”

Civic leaders in Atlanta are backing a proposal for a $100 million civil rights museum in the city’s Olympic Park neighborhood. “The center would showcase the papers of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which Atlanta acquired last summer, and would recognize contributions of Atlantans and other Georgians to the civil rights movement.”

Over the past five years, the city of Providence, Rhode Island, has been steadily eliminating arts education programs in its public schools in order to close budget gaps. As it turns out, that doesn’t sit well with the state commissioner of education, who this week ordered to city to restore art and music classes by next year. “Starting with the 2008 senior class, students will have to demonstrate their proficiency in a core curriculum that includes technology and the arts.”

“A series of arts projects involving the very young, elderly, disadvantaged and isolated in Scotland has been launched to test the idea of ‘cultural entitlements’. The 13 schemes, which will be established with £1.2m of executive and local authority funding, will run for two years and follows the publication of Scotland’s first Culture Bill last week.”