Category: issues

“A tug of war erupted last week over L.A.’s new downtown arts high school, with some of its biggest supporters declaring that they had given up on the Los Angeles Unified School District and wanted the $242-million campus turned over to a charter school organization. In response to the critics, who included philanthropist Eli Broad, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines shot back: ‘There is not a for-sale sign on it.'”

Some cities concentrate their resources on a couple of high-profile institutions. Others, like Seattle, spread the resources around and end up with…

“In a sign that the recession is cutting into the Walt Disney Co.’s park business even deeper than originally thought, Disney today said it eliminated about 1,900 jobs at its domestic theme parks through job cuts and attrition.”

“Of the 42 fine-arts professors at Parsons — all working artists — 39 teach part time. On March 10 nine professors, who taught on either a semester-to-semester or year-to-year basis, received e-mail messages that said they would not be reappointed for the 2009-10 academic year. Faculty members at Parsons and at other area universities are protesting the action.”

“It’s unthinkable. The Globe is the center of the whole communications structure in the city. People say, oh, you can go online. Well, there’s no journalistic standard there. It’s not the way civilization should be organized. It’s very disturbing to me.”

“Whether search-engine news aggregation is theft or a protected fair use under copyright law is unclear, even as Google and Yahoo profit tremendously from linking to news. So maybe Murdoch is right. He seemingly was blaming the web, and search engines, for the news media’s ills. ‘People reading news for free on the web, that’s got to change’.”

“Architects will proceed with detailed construction blueprints for the project, which has been threatened with a long delay because of the recession. It will take about a year to finish the blueprints, and city officials say that’s when they’ll decide whether to start construction, scale back the $425 million center or keep waiting until the economy improves.”

“In a way, Christina Orr-Cahall’s story is ancient history. And while the job in Seattle may be plum in some respects–interim EMP director Josi Callan made $339,192 in fiscal year 2007, according to tax records–it’s also about as far as you can get from respected centers of culture without getting out of the museum business entirely.”

“The 8-year-old Mondavi Center at UC Davis will offer seven fewer performances next season than it did in 2008-09 … [with an] increase in the center’s tried-and-true classical music offerings and a decrease in riskier dance and jazz programming.”

“Orange County’s resort-tax collections plunged nearly 29 percent in February, prompting the comptroller to say she doesn’t see ‘any way’ the county can make its next payment for Orlando’s new performing-arts center.” The Philips Center is scheduled to open in 2012, though Orlando’s mayor has said that the funding difficulties could cause a delay.