UPDATE: The discussion at Portland Arts Watch on this post is getting robust as well. You might want to have a look.

I just posted a version of this at Portland Arts Watch, and I’m thinking that I’ll extend it to these precincts as well, because I really do want to hear opinions about this topic. It’s something I’ve wondered about for a long time: How review-centric should newspaper/site coverage of the arts be? That boils down to a multitude of individual judgments, and I’d love to hear your thinking!

Everyone knows that this an era of shrinking resources at your local newsgathering operation (which we once called a “newspaper”). That means fewer staff members and less space in the paper for just about every section and department. And that in turn means a reconsideration of almost all of the coverage habits that have been developed over the decades.

The arts and culture department hasn’t been excluded from this, of course, either at The Oregonian or at other operations across the country (where the trimming often has been more radical in arts than other sections). We’re not going to go into all of that now, but a couple of posts we picked up on ArtsJournal do single out and discuss one of those coverage habits in the arts — the daily review, theater in this case, but by extension, all newspaper reviews.
Continue reading Want a little review with that play? →