Arts Journalism creates reporting on all mediums and genres with the fine and performing arts. Journalist may participate within the category if they have something meaningful to say about art and culture. Some receive training at the undergraduate or graduate levels in the arts and humanities in order to sharpen their journalist skills for application for jobs or starting an arts journalism platform from scratch.
According to Wikipedia, arts journalism has been popular for over a century. An early example would be L’artiste, an 1831 journal covering exhibits, nineteenth century art and art criticism.
Now arts journalism is more accessible due to the development of online, digital news platforms. While print journalism still exists, many media companies continue to have both a print and digital product or may move their entire periodical online.
Wikipedia also describes analysis of arts journalism platforms from 1955 to 2005, and found an increase in the amount of content influencing pop culture in the United States, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
How I Become an Arts Journalist
In Winter 2007, I had a final project for a class in Business and Professional Writing. My classmates and I were tasked with creating an original idea for a company and developing documents to send to various staff within our organizations. Following in the steps of Myspace and Facebook, I designed a social network for people participating in arts and entertainment fields. I created documents to send to the Communications staff, Information Technology, and Board of Directors. After I submitted the final project, I decided to make it a reality.
I registered the business with the Secretary of State’s office in Missouri and filed a fictious business name and articles of organization. The company’s website made its debut in September 2008. From that point, I never stopped working on the project even though I had already received an “A” on my final. The business became something for me to believe in, and I had a blast meeting all of the creatives and showcasing their artwork to the world to the best of my abilities.
If I could do it all over again, I may not have created a social network for artists. Facebook became so popular, even Myspace could not keep up with it. There was essentially no point to having an arts-centric social network when all of the tools and resources needed to promote yourself and your work are easily accessible through Facebook. Even though I knew it would be impossible to compete with Facebook, I decided to switch gears and make the company website something that can be of value in a different way.
I credit my collaborator, Robert Cunningham III, with helping me discover the need for arts journalism. He and I were working for the same non-profit organization and he spoke to me for the first time at the copy machine one day. He said he didn’t know why he needed to talk to me, but something was encouraging him to do so. He invited to his office where we chatted about a variety of things. When he learned that I had a company website that was fairly popular with creatives online, he asked me to leave and come back to his office in one hour. He needed the time to research exactly what in the world I was talking about. When I returned to his office, he was more familiar with the lingo. He knew what a blog was and the emerging platforms on Alexa ranking like Buzzfeed (at the time). I remember he looked at Yahoo’s main page with all of its original content, and he looked at me and said “your stuff is just as good as theirs, if not better.” That’s all I needed to hear. From that point, almost 10 years ago, I have been creating arts journalism content.
Covering Hard News
Throughout my career, I have covered hard and soft news. I was a Ferguson resident during the Michael Brown shooting and the subsequent media frenzy that occurred. I had a personal stake in the story being a resident in the area. From the moment I discovered that an unarmed teen had been gunned down in Ferguson, I knew this was going to be a story of national interest. I created a news website to house the hard news content that I was going to be making going forward. I went to W. Florissant every night of the peaceful protesting just like the reporters from CNN and MSNBC. I met many freelance journalist from the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post Dispatch and other media outlets. For the first time in my career, I felt like a real journalist who was making a difference.
Combining Hard News and Soft News
In 2020, I combined my hard news and soft news platforms into one website-Arts Tribune. While it is primarily an arts journalism platform, Arts Tribune can cover any topic; the content strategy behind it involves generating content associated with arts and entertainment as an industry, and much of its content has a unique spin that targets artists and patrons of the arts who want to develop the industry as far as possible.
The Future of Arts Journalism
Today, arts journalism can be found in print and digital formats. However, it would be safe to assume that many new publications will be on the rise in the future. There is an infinite number of perspectives one can take in regards to arts journalism; media companies can choose to only focus on art collectors, for example, and tailor the content towards that goal. As for Arts Tribune, we are going to continue to focus on targeting artists and arts patrons, informing them regarding information pertinent to their creative and professional interests.