March!

Everyone I talk to in theater, and every blogger I know, and most bloggers I read seem to have a chip on their shoulder about one thing: The New York Times' Theater Coverage. (This group includes me, btw). Hell, you don't have to live in NY to take offense, and you could be a dramaturg as well as an actor, director, writer etc. We all hate the Times' arts coverage. Okay, why?

These are the complaints I hear the most often (in no particular order):
1) Charles Isherwood's reviews are unnecessarily mean spirited and hateful.
2) Most of their other reviewers don't seem to know much about theater.
3) Most of their reviewers don't seem to particularly like theater very much.
4) They do almost no real theater journalism. The closest NYTimes equivolent, "On Stage and Off" (little more than a gossip column) was eliminated some time ago.
5) The Sunday Times is nothing more than a PR outlet.
6) When they try to write articles on theater subjects their articles are riddled with errors.

The list goes on and on.

Well, we could sit around complaining or we could try to do something about it. These problems are all traceable to the lack of good editing of the theater section at the times, and lack of the kind of overall vision for a section of the paper that a good ediot could provide. So what can we do?

Well, one thing you could do is write the public editor. I, for one, would love to see Jill Dolan's excellent critique of the Times profile of Sarah Shulman get seen by all the right people. So instead of (or perhaps on top of) complaining about the Times coverage on our blogs, perhaps Jason, myself, George, Jill, Joshua, Garrett, Shelia, and others will write letters as well. It's not much, but it's a start. As theater artists, spectators and writers, we desperately need good arts coverage at the nation's Newspaper of Record, and it is time we demanded it.

And like I said, this is a start.

Who's with me? I wrote an e-mail two days ago.

Comments

[Jason Grote]

This is a terrific idea. I have been wanting to blog about Isherwood in particular (having taken swipes galore at Zinoman already) but have been exceptionally busy. I'm also writing a piece for Contemporary Theatre Review that will mostly complain aobut critical infatuation with cheap Beckett/Mamet simulacra but will definitely indict the NYT as well.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Wen Ho Lee and Judy Miller (and to a lesser extent, Jayson Blair) scandals indicate what might be wrong with the NYT's theater coverage; it's a sheltered culture of power, in which clout counts for much more than almost any aesthethic criteria. This explains why some unwatchable thing by poor old AR Gurney at the Flea gets treated with kid gloves while Rinne Groff, Lucy Thurber, Itamar Moses, Neena Beber etc etc get savaged. What editor is going to go after a reviewer for attacking a relatively unknown writer? Whereas, if they went after Albee (Brantley's review of SEASCAPE today notwithstanding, it's a revival and it already won a Pulitzer) heads would roll.

So, yet again, the NYT's staff puts callow careerism ahead of the public interest. Naturally, WMDs in Iraq are a much more important issue than theatre is, but it's a symptom of the same thing. I'll tell ya one thing, though, I haven't seen APPARITION yet, but if Isherwood attacks it unjustifiably I am not going to relent until he gets fired. Even if it takes decades.

[Joshua]

I don't read the Times (sacrilege, I know) but what the hell, count me in - I'll email a letter in, why not? And perhaps we should all coordinate blog articles sometime after this holiday, whatta say? Get you and George and Martin and everyone to blog about the ineffeciency of the Times Theatre reviewing - who knows? Maybe we'll get some head to roll somewhere.

Let me know.