The perennial cry of arts journalists - and a recurring theme of this blog - is how we are going to get paid in the new media economy to do what we do. But who says we should get paid at all?
A fascinating entry on the Arts Journal weblog by Chloe Veltman points out that as, arts journalists increasingly find themselves losing their job or working harder for less money, “arts journalists are starting to look more and more like artists in terms of the piecemeal way that they are scratching out their existences in order to practice their craft. Like the actor who waits tables for a living or the folk singer who temps in a law office to make ends meet, these days, journos are having to hold down all manner of part- and full-time jobs that have nothing to do with the media in order to continue doing what until a few years ago would have been regarded as a profession. Now, arts journalism is for many a vocational sideline.”
She goes on to point out, “It is the nature of the world that some professions are no longer useful to society and therefore become extinct. For example, pianists used to make a good living as employees of cinemas, playing for silent films, but this job barely exists today. It’s going to take a lot of educating to make people see that quality journalism - and quality arts journalism in particular - still have value in today’s world. But there’s no guarantee that this will happen. If the funding mechanisms necessary for supporting the profession don’t develop soonish, it won’t be long before arts coverage is solely practiced by moonlighting waiters and nighttime corporate security guards.”
We already have a member of the drama section of the Critics’ Circle whose day job is that he is an accountant, so it’s not an illusion; it’s already happening. This isn’t to say that the critic concerned isn’t diligent; he’s at every single press night, coming straight from his day job, and it puts him in the enviable position of not requiring to earn a living from his journalism as some of the rest of us are still trying to do. But the question arises, what would happen if we all did accountancy courses now and started offering accountancy for free? What would he do for a job then?
Of course, no special qualifications are required to be a theatre critic: just the fact that someone employs you to do so makes you one. But in the new online environment, no such appointments are necessary anymore; you can start a blog and call yourself one in the click of a mouse. It’s an increasing challenge amongst theatrical PRs to work out who they should extend the courtesy of free theatre tickets to.
This is, of course, particularly tested at the Edinburgh Fringe, where a plethora of review freesheets, magazines and festival websites have sprung up over the last few years. This means there sometimes seem to be as many critics in Edinburgh as performers. Now that most London-based national critics of my acquaintance - with the honourable exceptions of The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner and the indefatigable Ian Shuttleworth - largely eschew the Edinburgh Fringe, I guess the fringe needs to get its quotes from somewhere. (Charlie Spencer wrote movingly in the Daily Telegraph on Monday about why he approaches Edinburgh with some understandable trepidation: “I used to love going to Edinburgh, because I felt the festive atmosphere gave me permission to go on the lash. This often resulted in disgraceful behaviour on my part, followed by the horror of trying to write reviews with a guilt-ridden, soul-crushing hangover the following morning. Yet even now, with the malty smell of the local brewery wafting on the breeze, and the lonely suspicion I always have in Edinburgh that everyone else is having a better time than me, it is the place where I feel most at risk of a relapse though, God willing, this year will be my 10th sober festival.”)
But how can the beast be tamed? The Edinburgh Fringe’s press office runs a media accreditation process to validate the numerous people claiming to be critics, so that there’s at least some kind of filter; but they’ve caused a little bit of a stir this year by denying accreditation to one particular website, The Public Reviews, which as its name suggests, uses members of the public to review shows as opposed to professionals.
The site has written an open letter to the Fringe office to protest at their exclusion, and it explains who and what they are: “The site has the sole aim to provide a unique voice in the world of reviewing, allowing normal (i.e. non-paid or ‘non-professional’) members of the public to become part of our dedicated and passionate reviewing team; a team that now consists of over 80 reviewers not only in the UK but also in the USA and in Australia. The growth of the website over the past 3 years is nothing short of phenomenal: in 2007 - 67 reviews, in 2008 - 88 reviews, in 2009 - 447 reviews and, so far in 2010, we have reviewed in excess of 600 productions around the world and forecast that we will have delivered in excess of 1000 theatre reviews by the end of the year.”
That team of 80 reviewers, though unpaid, aren’t just anybody, though; in order to be accepted as part of the reviewing team, prospective reviewers must submit sample reviews. So it’s no different to any other outlet covering the theatre - and many established sites don’t pay their so-called critics, either.
It may well be that this as traditional media outlets fall away - or start hiding behind paywalls, like The Times is now doing, so that their reviews are hidden to all but subscribers to it - this form of reviewing is going to become increasingly important. At the seminar I wrote about yesterday on the relationship between critics and practitioners, theatre PR Kevin Wilson made an interesting point that he relies on the web to cover some of his shows, advising his client that even getting a review in Time Out might be unlikely. (Time Out now limits itself to a dozen or so reviews a week; the Evening Standard has now reduced its theatre coverage to around six reviews a week).
Dan Pursey, who runs the well-established London PR agency Mobius, has added a comment to the open letter of the Public Reviews, saying, “We have worked with the Public Reviews for a long time now and readily accept them to all of our shows. You’ll note their recent attendance at Old Vic’s Aftermath, part of LIFT, for example. I find their reviewers conscientious, insightful and hard working. In a festival of 2500 shows I feel it is important to encourage coverage to be as wide spread as possible - small, developing companies need all the feedback and publicity they can get.”
And another contributor who is taking a show to Edinburgh also points out, “Our show has a run of only a week, so reviewers with a quick turnaround (yes, that does basically mean internet sites) are more valuable to us than a review in print that could take days from when (if) the reviewer gets to see our show. I’m really surprised that The Public Reviews has been refused press accreditation, especially if you see the quality of these so call ‘amateur’ reviews. They only seem amateur in the fact that they aren’t being paid, to me.”
At the Edinburgh Fringe of all places - with its open access policy to all companies who are prepared to take the risk of being there, rather than being invited to be there - it seems that the Fringe office doesn’t want that open access policy to extend to enthusiasts who want to cover the fringe. Accreditation doesn’t, in any case, guarantee free tickets; the “big” five venues - the Traverse, Assembly, the Pleasance, Gilded Balloon and Underbelly - all run their own press offices, and can choose to deny even accredited journalists tickets to their shows, since they are operating under the jurisdiction of the producers of the shows in them. There are many cases where, even if you ask those press offices for a ticket, they will have to check first with the company concerned before issuing them).
And being paid for your writing isn’t, of course, a pre-requisite either anymore to call yourself a critic. One of the best reviewing sites out there is theartsdesk.com, set up by a team of established print journalists, and it isn’t paying its contributors at the moment yet, either. (Neither does one of the biggest and most influential news and opinion sites in the US, The Huffington Post). But they’ve all noticed that the market is changing, and are taking a proactive step to be out there with a well-produced site that may, in turn, start making money in due course. The Public Reviews could well be part of that new economy, and it extremely short-sighted of the Edinburgh Fringe office to deny them their place at the reviewing table.
I assume the best way to get a full house is pretty much the same as in our day, Mark. Production values; cheap tickets; attention-grabbing leafletting for hours and hours on end and, of course, a Scotsman Fringe First or three! Team work in a nutshell.
No disrespect to the individuals in question but The Arts Desk's problem is as follows: I see no evidence of readers assuming colossal interest in pieces by Jasper Rees and Veronica Lee when we buy papers featuring their contributions for which they are paid. So to set up a website featuring their musings on their day off is asking abit much.
That having been said, the Barbican Press Office would probably take a different view. And it is a lovely idea, just a pity the execution is just so somnolent.
I was delighted to read this insightful article Mark, it certainly put a few things into context.
I have previously been accredited to review at the last 4 festivals, including last year when I was the sole reviewer for the Public Reviews. It is baffling to have been accredited for them last year and yet refused accreditation this year.
The only people who lose out are those putting on the shows, and at an arts festival that is gradually being squeezed by the growth of the comedy festival I would say theatre productions need all the press & publicity they can get to help put bums on seats.
The argument that "The only people who lose out are those putting on the shows" is an appealing one, but it doesn't necessarily hold much water.
Edinburgh may be being "squeezed" in the long term (although there's a false binary in your remarks since "the comedy festival", both administratively and, I'd argue, still spiritually is part of "the arts festival"), but the proportion of theatre in the programme this year has grown even despite the overall 17% increase in production numbers, whilst comedy remains at the same proportion of the total. Notwithstanding the great techno-crash of '08, ticket sales too continue to grow appreciably. So there's not, this year at least, any greater imperative for theatre reviews.
The notion of the absolute value of reviews can also be questioned. You seem to assume that any publicity is good publicity. I beg to differ. I've seen bad reviews take their toll on productions, and Edinburgh in August is if anything more susceptible than the theatre world in general to this; an Ed-Fringe show needs positive raves to stand out. Therefore there must surely be at least some people putting on shows who, on the contrary, would lose out as a result of getting a review from you if that review was negative, or even to an extent if it was insufficiently positive. The two alternatives to this are (i) you review everything you see positively, in which case the people who lose out are your site's readers, who have no reliable criteria or evidence of discrimination (in the non-prejudiced sense) to rely on as regards the reviews published, or (ii) you keep silent on shows you can't in conscience be positive about, in which case, those shows would "lose out" on publicity anyway and your non-accreditation makes no difference to them.
This is all theoretical; I'm not for a moment saying that you do behave in one way or another, because I simply have no knowledge or experience of you or the site. I'm just looking at the logic and reasoning of your argument.
I notice, too, that the site's letter of protest to the Fringe Society speaks of the increasing number of productions it has been reviewing, but makes no mention of hit numbers received by the site. A suspicious person might be tempted to draw inferences from this silence :-)
I'm not saying, either, that the Fringe were right to decline you accreditation; I presume they will have had reasons, but I obviously can't pass an opinion on those if I don't know what they are. I'm just saying that they're not as obviously wrong as seems to be implied. And, as Mark points out, review tickets are in any case in the gift of venues and/or producers; your site's approval by Dan Pursey counts for something, and since you yourself have previous Edinburgh reviewing experience I'm sure you'll be able to call on established relationships with the result that any disadvantage to you will be considerably lessened.
On a scarcely related matter but just out of curiosity, I'd be very interested to see whether the Fringe had figures on the growth of press & promoter complimentary tickets compared to the growth in the number of tickets sold...