University of Southern California
For A Summit On Arts Journalism
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Amount$24,975
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Program
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Date Awarded6/10/2009
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Term12 Months
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Type of SupportProject
Overview
The University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism and the National Arts Journalism Project will host a two-day summit on the future of arts journalism. Co-Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the summit will bring 100 participants together to hear presentations by 15 entrepreneurs about new models for ensuring that cultural criticism remains vibrant even as conventional models for arts coverage – and print media especially – become outmoded and disappear. Fifty percent of US arts reporters have lost their jobs since 2007; in many regions – including the Bay Area – the two major dailies have reduced their arts coverage to one full time reporter, and for-profit alternatives such as free-weeklies, neighborhood or suburban publications have drastically cut back the space devoted to featuring artists and arts organizations as a result of the recession and longstanding dysfunction in the commercial media’s business model. While traditional media – and outlets for the arts to be publicized and critiqued – dwindle, new media technologies are on the rise. This summit will leverage the alumni community of the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institutes, the 800 members of the NAJP, and the 250,000 unique monthly visitor’s the NAJP’s Artsjournal.com website to recruit and select 15 projects to make short presentations from which three will be awarded $5,000 to launch pilot versions of their ideas. From blogs started by laid off theater and music critics, to websites created by service organizations (such as SF Classical Voice.com), to crowd sourced aggregations and rankings, to zines and sites supported by philanthropy or membership, some pioneering efforts are already underway and this summit seeks to bring the best of the ideas together to be shared more widely. In addition to the group who will attend the summit in September 2009, the event will be webcast and digitally archived to increase the total number of participants and virtual attendees.
About the Grantee
Grantee Website
www.usc.edu
Address
3720 Flower Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-0701, United States
Grants to this Grantee
for the USC Radio Group’s Northern California affiliate, KDFC
University of Southern California Radio Group is a media organization that operates the most-listened-to network of classical music stations in the United States. Its Northern California affiliate, KDFC, broadcasts on five stations, reaching the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The local organization also streams content online, and presents performances and events at the Bowes Center for Performing Arts, which it leases from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Support for KDFC, through University of Southern California Radio Group, is aligned with the Performing Arts Program’s former Continuity and Engagement strategy through the Traditional Works substrategy.
for the Equity Research Institute
USC’s Equity Research Institute (ERI) provides data and analysis to power social change. ERI produces research and facilitates discussions on issues of the economic, environmental, and social conditions facing low-income communities and immigrant populations — and the social movements that are working to change those conditions. ERI, in partnership with the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz, is working on a theory, narrative, and policy platform of “solidarity economics,” which addresses widening income inequality, rising economic insecurities, and growing social and racial fragmentation, while also promoting innovation and economic growth. It approaches this work in collaboration with social movement organizers and change-makers seeking to make solidarity economics a reality.
for opinion research on teaching controversial subjects
The University of Southern California’s Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research conducts the Understanding America Study, a nationally representative survey of approximately 8,000 households. The study includes a subsample of households with at least one K-12 child in the home. Dornsife is collecting new survey data from parents to deepen the survey’s focus on civic and racial topics. This supplemental grant supports the Dornsife Center’s survey research efforts, including the analysis and dissemination of results. (Strategy: K-12 Teaching and Learning)
