Theatre Coverage: How the Denver Post Does It

Profiled by David Cote as one of the country's twelve most influential theatre critics, theatre reporter John Moore of the Denver Post describes in his blog Running Lines the paper's multifaceted coverage of theatre in the state:

I’m just a little surprised (but not at all ungrateful) that the reason I was told I pretty much made the list isn’t reflected in the article [. . . .] I’m no dummy. I didn’t make it because I produce reviews you might mistake for the New Yorker’s. What I will own is a work ethic that has allowed our Denver Post team to cover an average of 160 to 180 plays a year for the past decade.

But the real reason I was included, I was told, is the multimedia innovations we have implemented on The Denver Post’s online theater page that have advanced the ways in which major metropolitan newspapers can cover theater in the age of social media. Some people have this misguided impression that the “legacy” (old school) media is dying, and I say it’s only dying if you stubbornly go down with the Santa Maria, instead of taking the wheel of a modern ocean liner.

At The Denver Post, we cover theater in print as much as any paper of our size could be possibly expected to in this era of shrinking news holes – we average three reviews, one advance, one issue story and one news roundup every week. But it’s been five years since we fully embraced the amazing possibilities that social media provide for us to expand our reach. In doing so, we’ve been able to both reach new audiences, and exponentially expand the ways in which we can get word out about what’s going on in local theater. Much more so than we were ever able to do with print alone.

Off the top of my head, I am thinking about our:

*Running Lines video podcasts (more than 200 episodes now, including audio segments)

*Standing O – our full-service web site dedicated exclusively to high-school theater in Colorado.

*Our “Running Lines” theater blog – home to breaking news, cast lists, spotlight on college theater and whatever else comes up during the day. This summer, when a visiting New York actor went missing on the streets of Denver, “Running Lines” had record traffic by giving the concerned a place to virtually gather, and helped (I think) coordinate efforts to bring the mystery to a quick and positive close.

*New Play Sampling Series – These are 5-to-10-page excerpts from new plays being performed in the area. This helps both theaters reach readers who have no prior knowledge of an unfamiliar title.

*Interactive presence on Facebook and Twitter.

*Our commitment to maintaining comprehensive online listings of every scheduled production, by opening date, by company, or by all current offerings.

*Our 24-7 online photo gallery that includes one production shot from every currently running production, which we embed in several places including our home page, so that readers can get a visual sense of their theatergoing options all in one place.

I think, too, that the comments that are already showing up at the bottom of David’s American Theatre story are worth an ongoing conversation. The list centers on legacy media, but there’s no doubt of the impact that new critics whose distribution is solely through the internet are having.

Click to read John Moore's full blog posting at the Denver Post

View 25-minute interview of John Moore by Eden Lang on her web program 'In Focus' of June 25, 2011 (especially recommended for his discussion of the role of the reviewer) (27 min. on YouTube -- the version without the initial advertising)

Internet Arts Writer Rainey Knudson on Prospects for Arts Journalism, NEA blog 'Art Works,' July 22

Article at Art Works, the NEA blog, via e-mail from You've Cott Mail (www.ThomasCott.com):

Commentary

50% of arts journalism jobs were lost in last 5-8 years. What's next?

Rainey Knudson, Founder of Texas visual arts website Glasstire.com, at NEA Art Works blog, 7/22/11

In recent years, there's been a groundswell of recognition about the alarming state of arts journalism. Witness the current collaboration between the Knight Foundation and the NEA; or the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program; or the Warhol Foundation's Arts Writing Initiative. The sense of urgency has resulted in a bit more funding for some writers, which is a good start.

The truth is, if we can just crack the nut of paying great art critics a living wage, then the arts journalism of the near future has the potential to be radically more effective, with far greater reach, than the old print model that has crumbled around us. In their conversation on this blog, the NEA's Joan Shigekawa and the Knight Foundation's Dennis Scholl cite a study that found that 50% of local arts journalism jobs have been lost in the past five to eight years. It's a shocking number, but in addition to spurring us all to action, it should also politely beg the question of how vital those critics were if their jobs (and their papers) wilted so suddenly.

There's probably a reason that that brand of arts journalism is dying, and it's not solely that advertising dollars are migrating away from print.

Arts journalism in the heyday of the daily newspaper got concentrated in the hands of too few people. For some of them, the easiest route was to applaud every show they wrote about, or to only cover their small coterie of friends. Bloggers and web startups said, "We can make this more fun, more entertaining, more vital, for way less money." Now those bloggers and websites are playing an ever-more critical role in arts journalism, and they themselves have to figure out how to pay their writers. The nut's going to get cracked; we're all just figuring out exactly how.

- - You can read the transcript of the conversation between Shigekawa and Scholl here.