The National Arts Journalism Program has closed at Columbia University, and the timing is not auspicious. NAJP director Andras Szanto says that for arts journalism, “it’s the best of times and the worst of times. It’s the worst of times in the uncertainty, anxiety, insecurity, and dislocation facing arts journalists in institutions that are being staffed by outsourced freelancers with pay scales that are comparable to artists. Within news organizations, they’re trying to keep up with an arts world that is being marginalized.”