All the News That Fits -- Anymore

I watched that whole Indians-Red Sox playoff game last Saturday night – the one that lasted until almost 1:30 Sunday morning. It’s not unusual for me to be up at 1:30 – or 2:30 or 3:30 or beyond – but I really wanted to stop watching that game. I didn’t think we were going to win. Well, I guess part of my brain did believe that; otherwise I don’t think I would have felt so compelled to keep watching.

But I was unusually tired. I had spent all day at the Fairmount Center for the Arts’ first-ever Writers’ Conference. Held at the brand-new Civic Center in Mayfield Village, the writers’ conference turned out to be a hugely satisfying and inspiring event, featuring world-class authors (some of whom live in this region), who delivered terrific lectures, readings and discussions – of their own works and on various aspects of writing and reading. And that was just the first day of the two-day affair.

After the conference on Saturday, I took out-of-town guests to the Cambodian restaurant Phnom Penh’s on West 25th Street. It’s one of the best restaurants in the region. And it offers the most interesting menu in the area. That’s an easy statement to make because (a) Phnom Pehn probably is the only Cambodian restaurant between Chicago and New York and (b) it’s true.

After eating at the restaurant, I still had a few minutes to get to the end of the Heights Arts benefit party at the organization’s space in the newly renovated Cleveland Heights Main Library on Lee Road. (Heights Arts also has a second space, a gallery, down Lee Road, a couple of doors south of the Cedar Lee Theater.)

The benefit could have and should have had more people, but organizations like that don’t get too much coverage in the newspapers, where a lot of people could find out about them with not too much expenditure of space. But Heights Arts does have a Web site, and, of course, the Internet is where an ever-increasing number of people are going to get the news they want. So the benefit did okay – it just could have done a lot better.

By the time I got there, I had missed all of the fun of the party, which featured music and visual arts and other genres that Heights Arts encourages, promotes, sponsors , teaches and presents. But I got to take home the leftovers of the food I had made for the party, so all was not lost. Oddly, it seemed as though there were leftovers only of the dishes I had made. I prefer to believe this was because I had simply made more than anyone else, and not that my food was less edible.

I still got home in time to watch three hours of that five-hour baseball game. Toward the end of the game, when the Indians were scoring runs and the announcers got louder, my wife, who had fallen asleep, woke up and thought they must be showing highlights of the game, which she assumed ended long before.

After the game Saturday night/Sunday morning, I still had work to do (don’t ask), so I stayed up for a couple more hours. But I also had to get up early again to attend the second day of the Fairmount Center for the Arts Writers’ Conference on Sunday. The second day proved to be as exhilarating as the first.

A good number of people attended the conference – maybe 100 altogether during the two days. If you can get 100 people to attend anything, other than something like a big rock concert or sports event, that’s good. But a lot more people could have and should have attended. There are many more people around who would have thoroughly enjoyed it; the conference was just as beneficial to people who enjoy reading as it was for writers.

I’m guessing that more people weren’t there because they didn’t know about it. The only publications in the region in which any word of the conference appeared were the Chagrin Valley Times, which printed a major piece on it, and Cool Cleveland, which included a preview of it – which I had written and submitted, as the conference’s volunteer PR helper.

Eating a quick breakfast, Sunday morning, before leaving for the conference, I read an old Plain Dealer Arts & Life section, the one from the October 4 edition, because it happened to be nearby, and because I was way behind in my newspaper reading, and because I didn’t want to take the time to go out and get that day’s paper, which, as usual, was somewhere on my street. (Every spring, when the snow melts, we find eight or nine soggy PDs somewhere in the vicinity of our front yard.)

I rarely read the first section of the newspaper because by the time I see it, I’ve already read or heard most of the news elsewhere. Even when it’s not a10-day-old paper that I’m reading – even when it’s that day’s paper – I’ve usually seen everything in the news section, either on TV, or, more likely, online. But I always read the Arts section because local TV never covers the arts and you’ll rarely find local news – except when a kid shoots people in a school – on the Internet. So, for me, the Arts section has always been the most valuable part of the paper.

That’s why it was disappointing to see that particular day’s Arts & Life section. Of the already small six-page section, approximately two pages were advertising. The four remaining pages contained: an article, about two-thirds of the front page, by the PD’s Chuck Yarborough, about the songs that play at Jacobs Field when each Indians player comes to bat; an article by one of the PD’s more interesting writers, John Petkovic, correctly taking LeBron James to task for wearing a Yankees cap to an Indians-Yankees playoff game in Cleveland (or anywhere) – a topic the PD had covered in at least six other articles during the previous week; an Associated Press article about which celebrities get the most magazine covers – Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson, Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, et al; a celebrity gossip column from wire reports; an Associated Press article about a Swedish artist whom radical Muslims want dead because of cartoons he has drawn; a well-written review by Tom Feran, one of the PD’s best writers for the past 25 years or so, of a baseball-themed book; a Newhouse News Service article about pinball machines; a one-sixth-page column containing six arts or pop culture-related items, one of which was a 75-word piece on a local arts organization’s benefit event.

The section also contained: a King Features Syndicate medical advice column; a Washington Post article about exercising; the syndicated Dear Abbey column; movie listings; that evening’s prime time TV listings; and the comics and puzzles.

Later, I checked the Arts & Life sections of all of the previous week’s PDs and found that they were all very similar in content to that October 4 edition. Some had a real article about something local and arts-related; some had less than a 75-word piece on anything local, like the October 4 edition had.

I’m not saying that any of this is bad or wrong. I mean, I always read almost all of that stuff (and then read about local arts in Northern Ohio Live magazine, Cool Cleveland, the Free Times, Scene and even the NEohioPAL e-newsletter). But it makes me wonder if this is what the majority of arts-section readers in this region really want to know about, and whether they also want to know more about what’s happening in the local arts scene. There are dozens of local theater companies, orchestras, art galleries, museums and other arts presenters, plus many other arts-support organizations. And the PD does write about many, if not all, of these organizations, in articles that are scattered throughout the year.

But they put out a newspaper 365 days a year, and even though – or maybe especially because – the paper’s space is becoming more and more limited, it would be wonderful to see even more coverage of local arts-related events, people and presentations in the newspaper space that, more and more lately, is being taken up by lots of things you can hear about on many TV networks, read about in lots of national magazines and see and hear about all over the Internet.

And the shrinking-space issue also makes it a little confusing to see things like he PD’s terrific rock critic John Soeder’s review of the recent Van Halen concert: The total space given to it – in the Metro section – was 57 column inches, which is generous. The accompanying picture (of Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth), however, took up 31 ½ of those column inches. The text of the review took up only 11 column inches. That’s slightly less than one-fifth of the total space. I suppose it’s possible that this was all Soeder had to say about the concert, but I tend to doubt that. I’m a writer. Writers like to write. I mean, when I started this piece, I thought it might be four paragraphs...

The Plain Dealer must know what they’re doing, though. They must conduct surveys, hold focus groups and consult with experts. So I’m sure I’m being naïve and idealistic about all of this. And, as I said, the paper does write about many local arts happenings. In fact, I’ve been written about myself in that section a few times, which I truly have appreciated.

The PD has some great writers on its staff, like Soeder and art critic Steven Litt, and columnists Connie Schultz, Regina Brett and Dick Feagler, and others.

But it does seem strange that, for instance, some days there is zero local arts coverage, and some days, like October 4, there may be only one 75-word piece on anything resembling local arts. Maybe I was being more sensitive on Sunday, especially after having attended day-one of the writers’ conference, wishing that the PD would have printed something – even just a sentence or two – about this major national writers’ conference, which was as good as any in the country (I’m told by people who have attended many), and which I was helping to try to publicize, not to make money – because I was doing it for free and the Fairmount Center was not profiting from it, either – but for the purpose of letting a lot of people who might be interested in it know about it and decide whether they wanted to go to it.

I felt the same way about a concert I saw last week – the amazing singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson – at the Beachland Tavern. I was sitting there thinking that all but about 40 music fans in the area must be crazy. Because there were only about 40 people there. I know that Gilkyson draws hundreds to her concerts in other places. She’s an important artist and has been for a while – a great guitarist with and incredible voice and amazing, moving, thoughtful, well-crafted songs. Plus, even without her band, she had with her Nina Gerber, possibly the most tasteful lead-guitar accompanist I’ve ever heard, obviating the need for a band (especially with only 40 people in the room).

So I decided that the only explanation for such a small crowd was that more people didn’t know about the show. Places like the Beachland can do only so much print and broadcast advertising because it’s so expensive. If you don’t know how expensive it is, you’d be surprised to find out. It’s becoming more and more difficult for local, independent companies and organizations to purchase advertising, especially in newspapers. And, of course, that’s one of the reasons the Arts section is only six pages these days. (The Internet is another – but that’s another story.)

But if you can’t advertise in the newspaper, and the paper doesn’t write anything about your event, not many people are going to show up.

Anyway, now it’s Monday night and the Indians and Red Sox are back at it. I’d better go watch the end of the game. Of course, even if I don’t, I can still find out all about it… 30 seconds after it’s over.

From Cool Cleveland contributor David Budin popcyclesATsbcglobal.net
(:divend:)