Tag: 03.13.20

Italy Debates: Are Physical Newspapers Necessary? The Answer Surprises

Newsstands are even registering a small bump in sales. That was clear in Milan. In a busier newsstand, near a major shopping street here, I had to wait to pay for the newspaper. And when my turn came, I had to ask my questions quickly. The newsagent was impatient, answering with short sentences, and insistently looking over my shoulder. A line was forming. – Quartz

What We Can Learn (And Should Unlearn) From Albert Camus’s ‘The Plague’

“If you read The Plague long ago, perhaps for a college class, … perhaps you paid more attention to the buboes and the lime pits than to the narrator’s depiction of the ‘hectic exaltation’ of the ordinary people trapped in the epidemic’s bubble, … caught up in ‘the frantic desire for life that thrives in the heart of every great calamity’: the comfort of community. The townspeople of Oran did not have the recourse that today’s global citizens have, in whatever town: to seek community in virtual reality.” – Literary Hub

‘It Felt Like A Parallel Universe’: Watching The Philadelphia Orchestra Stream Beethoven From An Empty Hall

“The few people present in the hall … were asked not to applaud because such meager clapping would sound pallid to listeners tuning in from elsewhere. But for those who were there, it was confounding to have the orchestra standing to receive phantom applause that wasn’t there,” reports David Patrick Stearns. “The atmosphere, though, was hardly grave.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

The BioPhysicist Who Crunched The Virus Numbers And Made Some Accurate Predictions

Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who teaches structural biology at Stanford University and spends much of his time in Tel Aviv, unexpectedly became a household name in China, offering the public reassurance during the peak of the country’s coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. Levitt did not discover a treatment or a cure, just did what he does best: crunched the numbers. The statistics led him to the conclusion that, contrary to the grim forecasts being branded about, the spread of the virus will come to a halt. – CTech

We Need To Rethink Audience Development

The reality for most organisations is that their value and survival increasingly demand competence – and coherence – across all audience development. Many next-generation cultural organisations are developing as ingenious social enterprises, learning to manage this cultural triple bottom line. Of necessity, they have to do well to do good. What matters is that an organisation is clear about its public purpose and priorities, and that it knows how to achieve them. – Arts Professional

Disney Says It’s Committed To Showing LGBT Stores Onscreen

Does anyone who identifies as queer or LGBTQIA actually believe Disney at this point? Probably not, but should production on movies and TV shows ever resume in the world, “There will be a transgender character in a future Marvel film, and upcoming superhero movie The Eternals will introduce Marvel’s first openly gay lead character to cinema screens.” – BBC

All Nine Members Of British Equity’s Minority Committee Resign

First came the comments from actor Lawrence Fox; then came the tweets labeling him “a disgrace” after his appearance on the show Question Time; then came Equity’s official apology for the tweets and removal of the tweets; and then came the mass resignations. Former chair Daniel York Loh: “It’s always felt more like a box-ticking exercise than anything else and our committee is there to look good in photos without really raising any serious or difficult issues (though of course we have, time and time again). Now Equity does not have a minority ethnic members or race equality committee.” – The Stage (UK)