- Related Topics:
- Art criticism
- journalism
- The arts
arts journalism
Arts journalism involves examining and reporting on the arts, including music, dance, theater, film, literature, visual arts, and architecture. It is a specialty in journalism that has evolved over the past few centuries. Arts journalism encompasses unbiased reporting of arts news and events but also can include arts criticism, which claims a history reaching back to the writings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Arts journalism takes an array of forms. These include feature stories such as personality profiles and performance or exhibit previews; business stories that cover the arts institutions’ finances, public and private funding of artists and other arts workers, and policies and politics behind art; investigative work involving subjects such as mismanagement or crime in the art world; science stories about how the arts affect health or science; and articles that examine the impact of the arts on education.
The role of the arts journalist and the number of them working at various types of publications have changed over time—shaped by cultural shifts in the arts and revolutionary changes in technology. Arts journalists often have an education or other background in the arts (specifically the form they cover) as the subject requires understanding of the nuances of the art form, the artists and other cultural workers active in supporting and presenting it, and its history. They need to be able to execute core reporting skills including conducting interviews, researching, and writing. They also need to understand how arts organizations of various sizes function, both for-profit and not-for-profit. Today, they, like other journalists, also often need to have skills in several forms of media, including the use of social media.
" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">
This entry discusses the evolution of arts journalism in the United States since the 19th century, then looks in turn at coverage of architecture, dance, literature, music, theater, and visual art. The entry concludes with a discussion of institutions that offer support for, and recognition of, arts journalism.
Arts Journalism: An Evolving Canvas
Arts journalism has developed following two tracks—journalism and the arts. While journalists have always reported on the arts, specialized writing began to flourish when more news outlets brought on art critics. The critics’ work in many ways fulfilled a journalistic role of documenting history in the arts, and their work was infused with deep knowledge and passion. In addition, a good number of critics also worked as journalists.
As the United States was developing, journalists wrote about many areas of the arts. Some work came as news through notices of what was happening in cities and towns through the local press and other coverage came through academic outlets or periodicals. While some of the academic coverage was critical in nature, it contributed to the journalistic canon in that it documented history and the people involved.
Arts journalists and critics apply the principle of objectivity to much of their work, like their colleagues in other areas of journalism. Arts journalism, however, encompasses exemptions to the principle. A critic’s work requires examination and assessment. Discernment also plays a role in an arts journalist’s work when deciding on what artists, events, and issues to cover and at what particular moments. This particularly holds true for events outside those that denote breaking news. Also, many working in arts journalism have experience in the arts, and some have been practicing artists. Editors and audiences often regard that background as valuable expertise that these arts journalists and critics bring to their work.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
Like other areas of journalism, professional norms for arts journalists require them to maintain professional integrity that extends to their coverage and relationships. Most media organizations demand journalists follow conflict-of-interest policies. Arts journalists with personal or professional relationships with certain artists or entities are often required to refrain from covering them or their associated projects. If there is a vital reason to cover them, journalists must disclose any conflicts of interest. Critics are expected to embrace ideals of independence and fairness by supporting reviews with details and sound reasoning.
Growth in Arts and Arts Journalism
Throughout the 19th century, print publications in large cities, which had a more robust physical infrastructure for the arts, carried the most coverage. But as technology, including the use of train travel, rose by the century’s close, this began to change. The press was growing. Art museums were opening in large cities across the country, and the number of touring performance groups, particularly those involved in vaudeville, spread out across the country. Journalists covered this growth and its impact on communities.
As travel to Europe increased by the turn of the century, arts journalists from Europe found audiences in the United States, and American journalists stationed overseas began writing about the prospering art scene across the Atlantic. Artists from both sides of the ocean began to visit the other side as well, including modern dancers from the United States who were challenging the status quo.
Progressive Era, New Technologies Create Boom
By the start of the Progressive Era in the late 19th century, newspapers had proliferated, and a consolidation of the industry took publications from private hands into corporate ones. Newspapers and magazines had more space to fill. That space existed in the news pages as well as pages dedicated to the arts. The beginning of the 20th century saw arts journalists covering a large number and diverse array of artists, from high to middlebrow culture. There was the new music form of jazz and new technologies that included the production of photographic film, the phonograph, and moving images. Meanwhile, Broadway theater, which began in the late 1800s, was blooming in New York. People had more leisure time, which increased the demand for the arts and coverage of the arts and arts criticism.
Arts Journalism Integrated Into the Newsroom
Through World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, arts coverage grew as opera houses opened across the country and radio and television expanded to include actors and classical musicians. Networks often embraced these musicians as guests on programs and even as employees who led and played in network orchestras. Novelists, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as visual and film artists of the era became cultural stars. Journalists covered their work as well as their personal lives. Arts coverage also encompassed the art, music theater, and writers’ projects launched by the government under the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency that employed people during the Great Depression.
Arts journalists became steady employees at news outlets, mostly print publications, documenting a growing arts sector and some even covering artists affected by the investigations of Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Their work coincided with the economic boom of the postwar years—all the way through the 1965 creation of the National Endowment for the Arts by the U.S. Congress. But during these latter years, some of the commercial arts, particularly popular music and film, were creating controversy by challenging long-held social mores.
Arts News Covers New Controversies
Arts reporters had a landscape laden with stories to report in the 1980s and 1990s with the AIDS crisis, which struck a significant proportion of gay men including many artists. Also, religious conservatives began objecting to public funding of art they found offensive. Among the art conservatives found objectionable was artist Andres Serrano’s photograph titled Piss Christ featuring a plastic crucifix in a tawny liquid the artist described as his own urine. Other debated works included those of four performance artists who had received National Endowment for the Arts grants and a solo exhibit of works by artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Reminders of that era and arguments against using tax dollars for the arts are still grist for arts journalists as federal and state politicians have proposed and even pulled funding from public coffers.
Other topics emerged or intensified nearing 2020, such as sexism, sexual abuse, racism, and discrimination as seen in arts journalists’ coverage of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements in theater, film, and other arenas. An example of that reporting is The New York Times’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning work led by reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, which exposed sexual abuse in Hollywood, including allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein.
News Organization Cutbacks and New Arts Journalism Outlets
Traditional journalism earned lower revenues with the ascendency of the digital revolution spurring a crisis in the industry. In the first two decades of the 21st century, this forced publications to lay off staff and let go of many arts journalists first. Doug McLennan, editor in chief of ArtsJournal, which compiles articles about arts and culture, estimated that between 2000 and 2008, nearly 80% of arts journalists and critics were laid off. Dennis Scholl, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s former vice president for arts, estimated that by 2011 as many as half of all local arts journalism jobs nationwide had been eliminated.
The layoffs and reduced arts coverage caused alarm. In April 2017, American Theatre magazine warned, “Arts journalism is fighting for its life.” In Margaret Sullivan’s 2020 book Ghosting the News about the decline of local news coverage, The Washington Post media columnist wrote about the important role of arts coverage to a city’s cultural life and how it provides “a sense of community and of place.” Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the layoffs of arts journalists increased as the economic fallout severely affected both journalism and the fine and performing arts industries.
Many arts journalists have gone on to establish nonprofit digital publications in their own cities. These publications include journalism and criticism. Some focus on specific art forms, while others cover the range of arts offered in their communities. One of the oldest is San Francisco Classical Voice founded in 1998. Some such as Oregon Arts Watch and Sightlines in Austin, Texas, have worked to cover the full spectrum of the arts. Performing arts-focused publications include Atlanta’s Arts Atlanta, Theatre Jones in Dallas/Fort Worth, and Philadelphia’s Broad Street Review. Publications emphasizing visual arts coverage include Glasstire, which covers the visual arts throughout Texas, and Atlanta’s Burnaway. Many of these publications depend on freelance writers.
Coverage Areas in Arts Journalism
Arts journalists work covering multiple art forms or specialize in specific areas including music, dance, theater, film, literature, visual arts, and architecture. This gives the field more specific specializations, and each has its own history that includes prominent journalists covering certain genres.
Architecture
A majority of current news in newspapers and news magazines on architecture comes from business journalists. However, some publications in large cities still have arts journalists who cover architecture, including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. More often, arts journalists cover architecture among other topics. Prominent magazines in the field include those founded in the 1890s—Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, and Architectural Review. Architectural Digest, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Dwell also are known for their arts journalism.
In their coverage, these journalists include the business aspects of architecture, such as the financial investments involved in construction, as they report on the influences on and background of designers and the effect their designs have on people in their private and public lives.
Their subjects encompass those in urban and suburban areas, and beyond. They have covered the placement and height of skyscrapers, the redesigning and rerouting of expressways, the design of arts facilities, the impact of arts districts as well as gated communities, access and the amenities in public parks, among other topics. Their coverage considers the social and political implications of architecture.
Heavyweights in this area, who have not primarily been critics, but have had a lasting effect on how journalists report on architecture, include writers Jane Jacobs and Robert Caro. Jacobs worked at Architectural Forum, where in the 1950s she covered the outcomes of urban revitalization, which she criticized. That led to her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Caro, who began writing about urban planning and land use at Newsday in the 1960s, came to write The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, which won him an award from the American Institute of Architects after its 1974 publication. The book described how Moses used his power to erect numerous highways and bridges around New York City and the consequences of that construction.
Many prominent critics have also worked under the journalist title and shaped the field. They include Montgomery Schuyler, one of the earliest and most prominent architectural journalists in the United States, who worked at The New York Times and Architectural Record; The New Yorker’s Lewis Mumford, who wrote in the 1930s and 1940s; the San Francisco Chronicle’s Allan Temko; Ada Louise Huxtable who wrote for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal; the Chicago Tribune’s Paul Gapp; and Paul Goldberger, who wrote for The New Yorker before contributing to Vanity Fair. Chicago Tribune journalist/critic Blair Kamin reports regularly, even in his work that features commentary, particularly the 1998 six-part series, “Reinventing the Lakefront.” This Pulitzer Prize-winning series covered problems along the city’s lakefront, including the inequalities between the North Side’s rich and largely white population and the South Side’s Black and poor neighborhoods.
Dance
Critics along with trade magazines have strongly influenced dance journalism, which requires that these journalists know the technical aspects of the craft and choreographic history. While many writers wrote about Western dance prior to the early 1830s, poet and French journalist Théophile Gautier is often recognized as the first dance writer because he covered ballet for La Presse in Paris.
Later in 1918, influential writer André Levinson came to France from Russia where he also had covered dance. His wide range of work included writings about ballet, covering Michel Fokine and Sergei Diaghilev who founded Ballet Russes, as well as Isadora Duncan and various indigenous forms of dance.
In early-20th-century America, dance received little attention due to its sexual and feminine inferences, although at The New York Times associate music critic Carl Van Vechten covered ballet from 1906 to 1913. Then with the evolution of modern dance in the United States, John Martin came to the newspaper in 1927, where he wrote at length about Martha Graham and the artists associated with Ballet Russes, including George Balanchine and his co-founding of the New York City Ballet. His tenure lasted until 1962, during which time he was joined by the notable poet and critic Edwin Denby, whose work hewed rather firmly to criticism. Denby’s work influenced dance journalism particularly and is featured in his books.
With the rise of ballet and modern dance in 20th century America came an increase in dance journalism through specialty publications, most aimed at industry insiders. After Dance Magazine launched in 1927 as The American Dancer, it introduced sister publications, including Pointe, Dance Spirit, Dance Teacher, and others. Other publications founded by journalists/critics include Ballet Review, launched by The New Yorker’s Arlene Croce in 1965 and closed in 2020, and Dance Chronicle, begun in 1977 under editors George Dorris and Jack Anderson.
From the 1960s through the early 1980s, dance, particularly ballet, embraced a wave of popularity through an injection of political events and pop culture attention often covered by journalists. Modern dance increasingly took on contemporary themes including feminism and civil rights. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, in 1961, the legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev fled the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for the West. Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to Canada in 1974 and again created a flurry of media coverage that extended to dance.
Today, the spotlight on dance has declined in the mainstream press with arts journalists increasingly covering dance as it relates to pop culture, such as when it appears in films or on television shows such as So You Think You Can Dance (2005–present).
Literature
Arts journalists and critics have covered literature as long as the press and books have existed. These journalists cover news and trends, as well as reviewing books. In the United States, the popularity of books ensured ample coverage in newspapers; magazines including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, and Newsweek; and alternative newsweeklies such as The Village Voice. Some newspapers began publishing ample supplements, such as The New York Times Book Review (1896), which is akin to The Times Literary Supplement founded in the United Kingdom (1902). Publications specifically covering books, authors, and the publishing industry also evolved, including the oldest trade publication, Publishers Weekly, founded in 1872, and The New York Review of Books, launched in 1963.
Since publishing has gone digital, more arts journalism is covering the world of literature with large outfits such as Buzzfeed, Slate, and Salon all including book sections. Also, the 21st century has ushered in publications dedicated to literature, including The Millions, launched in 2003 and The Rumpus, founded in 2009, which cultivated the career of writer Roxane Gay who went on to become a New York Times contributing opinion writer. Then there is The Los Angeles Review of Books, founded in 2012, which began by covering books in every genre and extended its mission to covering the arts.
Music
Music journalism has its roots in criticism and academic coverage of 19th century classical music and paralleled Romantic music’s popularity. In the English-speaking world, The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular published in London held sway with musical producers and loyal music audiences.
In the United States, newspapers began to cover music in Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune in 1852 with journalist William Henry Fry’s work in Europe as a foreign correspondent for a group of newspapers including the Tribune. Although Fry, the first music critic for a major American daily, also reported on music, his dual profession as a composer shaped his writings. Significant critics/journalists followed, particularly William James Henderson who wrote for The New York Times and The Sun, also based in New York City.
Over the following decades, music-focused magazines launched, including Musical America in 1897, which today reports on classical music news throughout the United States and often beyond. The rise of music recording brought Gramophone, established in 1923 in the United Kingdom, to cover classical recordings critically and cover news in that industry. Meanwhile, arts organizations began to get into the arts journalism arena with the Metropolitan Opera Guild (a group dedicated to supporting the Metropolitan Opera and opera in general) taking on publishing Opera News in 1936. The rise of jazz and blues brought Downbeat magazine founded in Chicago in 1934.
During these years, newspapers continued to report the news in music as technology helped create a larger music industry with more recordings and performances in many genres on an array of stages. The popularity of television, which also spotlighted classical music, conductors, and musicians, helped bolster that coverage.
With the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll music in the 1950s and 1960s came the rock journalist reporting in magazines, newspapers, and new publications later called alternative newsweeklies pioneered by New York City’s Village Voice, founded in 1955. There, beginning in the late 1960s, Robert Christgau established himself as the self-proclaimed “Dean of American Rock Critics.” On the West Coast, Rolling Stone magazine launched in 1967 and ran the work of such journalists as its editor Ben Fong-Torres, Lester Bangs, who went on to become the editor of the Detroit-based Creem magazine, Greil Marcus, and Cameron Crowe.
As music mutated in subsequent decades giving rise to the proliferation of independent music, specific publications cropped up to cover it with the online magazine Pitchfork becoming a leader. Launched in 1996 in Minneapolis, Pitchfork’s early journalism has been criticized for being unpolished. Pitchfork received praise, however, for its series work, such as that tackling issues of sexual assault in the music industry. Many newspapers also undertook this issue, including Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, who doggedly investigated the musician R. Kelly and his sexual abuse of minors for 19 years resulting in DeRogatis’s 2019 book The Case Against R. Kelly.
Theater
Journalism covering theater extends to reviews but also includes a range of subjects including upcoming productions; profiles of playwrights, actors, and other theater-makers; technical issues; and even sexual harassment.
Theater has been an ever-present art form in the United States. Europeans brought their version to colonial America and William Shakespeare’s works were performed. The early press covered theatrical performances that were community events, particularly in larger cities that were near ports along the Atlantic.
Theater remained popular and saw increased popularity after the Civil War. In 1884, a New York theater began publishing Playbill magazine to include information about its shows. Decades later, Playbill began covering theater with feature stories about Broadway shows as the White Way prospered. By the 21st century, Playbill was issuing an animated online publication that included podcasts and other features.
Through the 1900s, newspapers throughout the country, but particularly those in the heart of the country’s theater scene, New York, dedicated staff to covering the art form. The New York Times took on a prominent role with writers that included Mel Gussow and Frank Rich. But other New York newspapers and magazines regularly covered Broadway and other theaters including the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Time Out New York, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, New York magazine, and even the Long Island newspaper Newsday. By 2020, some arts journalists from other metropolitan dailies were still traveling to New York to report on the industry and review productions, including those from The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune.
On the West Coast, thriving theater scenes received coverage from the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Seattle Times. Cities beyond the coastal regions of the United States also had arts journalists who covered the regional theater movement, which had brought professional theater to many communities. These journalists filled space with their reviews and a host of other stories related to theater including the work of theater productions in prisons, education, and other areas. By the 21st century, they were covering more stories about sexual harassment in some theater companies.
Stories like these were covered not just by newspapers but by alternative press, online publications, radio stations, and industry publications. One is American Theatre magazine, founded in 1984 by Theatre Communications Group, an organization promoting nonprofit professional theater. The print magazine that also publishes online content covers a range of issues already mentioned. While the organization is not independent, like other journalistic institutions, the publication asserts principles of journalistic discourse.
Visual Art
The reporting and analysis inherent in academic writing, journalism, and criticism have been intertwined in coverage of visual art. Originally, art coverage encompassed sculpture and painting. In contemporary journalism, visual art also includes textiles, photography, film, graffiti or murals, mixed media works, and conceptual and performance art.
Criticism dates back to France and the writings of Denis Diderot (1713–1784) who covered art in Paris Salons and annual art exhibitions for a private newspaper called the Correspondance Littéraire. Diderot’s work was admired by another critic, Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) whose writing extolled the work of Eugene Delacroix and Edouard Manet.
In the United States, visual arts coverage came with art production by local artists but received a boost when museums were established in the 19th century and through early in the next century as artists’ colonies took root throughout the country. Most of the early arts news and criticism came out of New York where galleries were based. One of the first art-focused periodicals was The Crayon (1855–1861). Another publication, The New Path began publication in 1863 with the goal of advancing natural art. Members of the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art included influential art critic Clarence Cook, who wrote for the New-York Tribune.
After the Civil War, an economic boom led journalists and wealthier Americans to travel to Europe where they were exposed to more visual art. In Paris in April 1874, journalist Louis Leroy wrote about an exhibit of 30 new artists and coined the description “Impressionism.” Art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831–1922) organized shows for the artists and worked to sell their works into private collections in the United States. American arts journalists later covered Impressionism. Prominent critic Clement Greenberg, The Partisan Review editorial staff member (1940–1942) and art critic at The Nation (1942–1949), wrote about how he viewed Claude Monet’s Impressionism as a key advancement in painting.
The Armory Show of 1913 was an event that roused the journalism world to visual art. Covered extensively by the press in New York, the exhibit with nearly 1,400 works included Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism and made its debut in the city before going to others. The exhibit’s works caused an uproar reflected in the press. One famous piece was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, by Marcel Duchamp. Journalists covered public reaction where it exhibited, and the public wrote in letters.
The event spurred wider curiosity about visual art, but the country already had specialty publications including ARTnews, launched in 1902. It covers the arts, curators, collectors, art dealers, museums, art houses, and other participants in the art market as well as trends internationally. Art in America, founded in 1913, was modeled after German academic journals and early issues covered the old masters in American collections and American folk art. The 21st century incarnation of Art in America focuses on art, artists, art criticism, and prevailing trends. Artforum, specializing in contemporary art, began publication in 1962 and includes coverage of conceptual and performance art, which rose in prominence during the era of its founding. With the 21st century has come the online, for-profit magazine Hyperallergic, which has a wide breadth of coverage.
During the 20th century, major daily newspapers covered the visual arts. Among the publications regularly covering visual art and having a lot to cover in their communities are The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
A 2002 study conducted by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University found at least one visual art critic working for most major general-interest news publications. In 2017, Mary Louise Schumacher, an arts and culture fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and former Milwaukee Journal arts and architecture journalist/critic, published a study that found the number of visual arts journalists shrinking at a fast rate. (Schumacher was laid off from her Gannett-owned newspaper before she released the study.)
Institutions Supporting Arts Journalism
The specialized area of arts journalism has garnered a host of educational institutions and professional organizations to support those working in the field.
Universities Offering Education in Arts Journalism
Since the institutionalization of journalism education in the early 20th century—marked notably by the 1908 founding of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the first school to offer a journalism degree—many journalism schools have offered courses in arts journalism and criticism.
In 2003, Syracuse University began offering the first master’s degree program in arts journalism at its S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Titled the Goldring Arts Journalism program, the one-year program gives students access to arts and journalism courses taught by writers, academics, and artists.
Since then other universities have followed. Columbia University School of Journalism, which had previously run its National Arts Journalism program for mid-career professionals for 11 years before closing in 2005, began offering its students a concentration in arts and cultural journalism that same year. In 2008, the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism established its Master of Arts in Specialized Journalism for the Arts, and City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism opened its Arts and Culture Reporting program.
Professional Organizations and Prizes
While journalism organizations are prevalent for other specialty categories, including those covering education, environment, healthcare, science, and travel, none pertain to the arts overall. There is only the Jazz Journalists Association (1987). However, organizations exist for arts critics including the International Association of Art Critics (covering the visual arts and founded in 1950), the Music Critics Association of North America (1956), National Society of Film Critics (1966), the American Theatre Critics Association (1974), and the Dance Critics Association (1974). The prestigious Pulitzer Prize has a category for critics, where the work of arts critics often is recognized.
With arts journalism falling on difficult times in the early 21st century, a few organizations have taken steps to recognize and support arts journalists. The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, which began the Rabkin Prize in 2017, gives annual $50,000 awards to selected visual arts journalists and has also recognized lifetime achievement in arts writing with major cash awards.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.