News-Record.com

Dang. I know well about the wrath of art aficionados; who knew I could have just ignored Plagens and avoided it all! He quoted me a couple times: We have what we call a visual arts columnist who writes for us about once a month.... Her columns -- and our coverage -- lean more toward features rather than criticism or reviews.... The visual arts get less coverage in the newspaper than any of the other artistic fields, with the possible exception of dance.

And later:

There are a variety of reasons we don't give art more respect. We perceive that the audience for such coverage is small. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy -- we don't write about it because it's not that much in demand, but it's not in demand because we don't write about it.... Advertising has nothing to do with these decisions. I suppose that if a gallery said it would purchase a premium-priced ad along the bottom of a page focusing on the world of art, we would leap at the opportunity to expand our coverage. To my knowledge that hasn't happened, and theaters and symphonies aren't big newspaper advertisers, but we find the money to write about their productions regularly.... Contemporary art is often hard to understand. I dare say that, if asked, most of the readers I know would subscribe to the Tom Wolfe school of [opinions about] contemporary art. (Advertising came up because he asked me about it.)

That said, I can't say the reasons for the evolution of newspaper coverage that Plagens cites on page 5 of his article apply to us.

Anyway, back to the letter to the editor. The letter writer wasn't pleased with what I had to say in the article. She wrote: We who do care about the importance of art in our lives would like to see more coverage, including criticism, by our local newspaper of the many opportunities to experience the visual arts in Greensboro. Our paper can serve the population as a valuable resource for broadening knowledge and interests.

I have had my share of conversations with representatives of the arts community, and I know all the arguments for more coverage. We would like to include more criticism of all of the arts in the paper. (One of the first calls I received when I got this job was from a movie theater owner who insisted we hire a fulltime movie reviewer to help him attract more art films and "to promote a higher level of culture in Greensboro.") Shoot, we'd like to cover all the performing and visual arts.

We know how more publicity would help the arts community, too, which isn't flush with cash for advertising. But I've never seen the evidence that reader demand is there. And I've never totally bought the idea, voiced in the article and in my conversations with arts reps, that by not increasing coverage, we're contributing to the dumbing down of the community.

It's like everything else. As space contracts, budgets tighten and the various arts groups and shows expand, we have to make choices based on what we think is significant and we think matters to most readers. (That's why we have three people writing about college basketball and only one whose fulltime job is to write about the entire arts community. It's a false comparison, but that's the answer to a common question on this topic.) Is it fair? Probably not. But it's where we think the readers want the coverage.