Category: today’s top story

“For all the ways that the web is changing entertainment, at its most basic level, it is an accelerator. If you want a recent example, there probably is none better than David and Ian Purchase of Markham, Ontario.”

“On Thursday, officials will unveil what many consider L.A.’s best shot for a bold civic space — a 16-acre park that would flow east from the cultural institutions atop Bunker Hill, around a cluster of government buildings and ending dramatically at the steps of City Hall. The design” includes “an event lawn for rallies and concerts, a community terrace featuring a multicultural garden, a performance space with a stage, and a plaza whose centerpiece would be the historic Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain.”

“In what is only the first step in averting a deficit this season, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association today shed 20 percent of its administrative staff and said other cost-cutting moves were on the way.” Twelve people were laid off, six vacant positions will remain unfilled, and all administrators earning over $50,000 will take pay cuts.

“Less than a minute after tickets for last August’s Neil Diamond concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden went on sale, more than 100 seats were available for hundreds of dollars more than their normal face value on premium-ticket site TicketExchange.com. The seller? Neil Diamond. … Selling premium-priced tickets on TicketExchange, priced and presented as resales by fans, is a practice used by many other top performers, according to people in the industry.”

By letting these administrative workers go and “eliminating two staff vacancies, the PSO expects to save approximately $150,000 this fiscal year and around $400,000 annually. Its budget is $30 million.” Orchestra CEO Lawrence Tamburri says, “This is our reaction to the economy, but it is not a traditional layoff.”

“Three of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s most senior dancers – and among the most respected artists in contemporary dance – were told two weeks ago that their contracts would not be renewed at the end of their current period of employment in May.”

“[T]he box office seems to get better as the evening news gets worse. But unlike in the first Great Depression — when Americans would cough up 27 cents to watch Fred and Ginger dance — the bad news isn’t necessarily good news for Hollywood moguls and their employees. That’s because today, movie studios are small divisions in much larger conglomerates. … So what is happening is a strange intersection: a thriving box office, along with serial layoffs at movie companies.”

“A business executive who had been based in Dubai was being held in a Dutch jail last night after being accused of taking part in the theft of works by some of the art world’s biggest names. … The paintings include works by Pissarro and Renoir, and had apparently been stolen from one of the world’s top art dealers, Robert Noortman.”

Among the posts this descendant of New Amsterdam colonists held were vice president at Columbia Records, Lincoln Center programming chief, Metropolitan Opera general manager, dean of the Columbia University School of the Arts, vice president of Steinway & Sons, and New York City cultural affairs commissioner. Not bad for a man who never finished high school.

When MinnPost.com launched in 2007, the questions were: “Could this business model – one dependent almost entirely on the goodwill of foundations and the charity of its readers – be sustainable? How to translate web traffic into enough cash flow to ensure financial independence?” Sixteen months on, the evidence so far leans toward yes, maybe…