Category: issues

The elimination of all staff positions for arts writers and deputy arts editors is part of a recently announced layoff of a quarter of all newsroom employees at the Fairfax Media chain’s print papers. In response, all journalists at the papers have gone on a weeklong strike.

The fact that the new president-elect chose to give his victory speech in front of the Louvre has been taken as a hopeful sign of his attitude toward culture (and its funding), as has the fact that he studied piano for ten years in his youth. There may be a bit of wishful thinking going on, however.

When the world’s most famous mayor writes off the U.S. government as a partner in the battle for clean air and the world’s most famous urbanist falls back on a set of tooth-fairy political fixes, then maybe cities’ best option really is despair.

It’s worrisome for large organizations like the Met Museum and all of the residents of Lincoln Center – but the boroughs are excited: “Mayor Bill de Blasio and his lieutenants are deep into a re-examination of the city’s $178 million arts budget and other cultural resources to try to give a higher profile — and perhaps more taxpayer money — to smaller institutions in disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

Here’s the issue: “While they may not be able to break into a Universal Studios or a Netflix directly, [cybercriminals] have learned that the highest-profile targets are supported by a system of soft targets — content collaborators, remixers, postproduction studios and others — that do not have the same resources, security technology or sense of paranoia. And the hackers have started capitalizing.”

Some of the programs are for active military members and their families as well. “There’s the theater program geared to military families in North Carolina, art-making classes for veterans in Salt Lake City and Shakespeare productions staffed by veterans in Los Angeles — not to mention a beloved children’s theater program based in Missoula, Mont., that organizes productions at far-flung U.S. military installations around the world. These are just a few of the programs the NEA has helped fund.”

The person who made the complaint said, “I simply believed that the comments made by Fry on RTÉ were criminal blasphemy and that I was doing my civic duty by reporting a crime.” Turns out that “Under Ireland’s Defamation Act 2009 a person who publishes or utters blasphemous material ‘shall be guilty of an offence.’ A conviction can lead to a fine of up to €25,000.”

In other words: Use Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and other social (and non-social) media to document stories of protest and stories of even small wins. “It is inviting and contagious for those who share views — seeing enough notes and posters in public makes it more welcoming to add your own. Visible support for a cause can translate into momentum.”