New Arts Journalism: What it Do? (Part One)

Commentary/Criticism + Artful Writing

The largest problem facing arts writing presently is that commentary and criticism have been distanced from the practice of artful prose. Instead of focusing on the craft of properly figured phrases today a form of personal essay has crept into alternative weeklies across the country. Subsequent to taking over the music section of Seattle’s the Stranger, Eric Grandy and his column, “Fucking in the Streets,” grant its Seattle readership smug, insider lingo and common place language.

“I'm still totally, head-over-heels smitten with Vivian Girls, who played Neumos on Thursday,” writes Grandy in a column from the first week of May 2009. The sentiment expressed is ample. Even if proselytizing for an act has no place in genuine commentary, the lackadaisical phrasing and simplistic explanation of his emoting leaves Grandy’s  writing void of style and substance. It’s unfair to cherry pick gems like that without context, but with another paragraph further along in the same column beginning with the nugget, “Finally, saw Secret Mommy in a basement on Saturday,” it’s easy to locate the pervasive, literary-transgressions and personal styled narratives that litter not just the Strangers’ music section, but innumerable alternative weeklies.

Historicity + Taking it to the People

At the same time that Grandy’s leadership and writing style can be called into question, the Stranger remains capable of drawing and sustaining a vibrant readership in print and on-line. With an audience that demands up to date notifications regarding performances, readings and newly released albums, books or films, Grandy’s bullpen of writers focus on Seattle-specific happenings.

In an early December post on the weekly’s website, Kelly O, a staff photographer, made mention of a well known, local personage being injured after slipping on his way to catching a taxi. The seemingly mundane occurrence certainly doesn’t play outside of Seattle proper, but the idea of catering to such a specific readership serves not just the paper as a whole, but the information that it seeks to disseminate. Affixed to Kelly O’s post about the injured man, there were no less than 25 comments. And while that might not be the most trafficked post on the website, the fact that such a number of people sought to interact with the not just the posted information, but the larger community around Seattle speaks to the power of writing for a narrow audience.

Connecting one’s writing to a single portion of the population, whether it’s a single discipline, cultural group or race lends the craft an urgency that the broadest approaches to arts writing lack. Using Chicago as an example, if a gallery opens a show devoted to a painter of Peruvian descent, it would behoove the critic or journalist covering the show to include a generous portion of South American history. Working to set an art object and its creator into some sort of historicity can benefit a writer and publication that he or she works for in two ways.

Firstly, lending a wider context to the work enriches not just the written critique or commentary, but can also expose an unfamiliar readership to a new culture. Secondly and just as a important, focusing on a specific culture will draw in readers who come from that background who may have been reticent to read arts writing and then potentially prompt the individual to attend a cultural event of some sort.