“The E! channel streams a feed of celebrity tweets across the lower third of its screen, while some CNN newscasters have practically made Twitter their co-anchor. Over at MTV, the new show It’s On with Alexa Chung allows viewers to type a message in Twitter and watch it appear on their living-room sets.” This despite the fact that “relatively recent history is littered with futile attempts to integrate television with the latest technological fad.”
Tag: 06.29.09
New-Media ‘News’: Do We Know What We Think We Know?
“Has technology’s ability to deliver information at such a rapid pace corrupted us? It’s one thing to marvel at how social media sites have helped spread Iranian news we might not have attained due to censorship — and with such timeliness; it’s quite another to have become a culture that prizes speed over confirmed facts. Have our standards for accountability dissolved?”
Among Nonprofits Fearing Future, Arts Orgs Most Worried
“Ninety-two percent of the nearly 100 respondents in a survey conducted in May by the Bridgespan Group said they were feeling the effects of the downturn. Eighty percent of charity officials reported that their organizations were experiencing financial stress, in another study conducted in April by the Johns Hopkins University’s Listening Post Project. Nearly 40 percent of the 363 respondents described the stress as ‘severe.'”
Michael Martin, A.K.A. Graffiti King Iz The Wiz, Dies At 50
“Iz the Wiz was a legend among graffiti artists, by almost all accounts ‘the longest-reigning all-city king in N.Y.C. history,’ as the graffiti Web site at149st.com puts it. In other words, Iz put his name, or tag, on subway cars running on every line in the system more times than any other artist. Michael Martin — Iz the Wiz — died on June 17 in Spring Hill, Fla., where he had moved a few years ago.”
Jerry Lewis To Direct Nutty Professor Musical On Broadway
“A musical version of the 1963 comedy classic ‘The Nutty Professor’ is headed to Broadway, and the director will be none other than Jerry Lewis himself. The comedian, who won’t be acting in the musical, has brought on board Marvin Hamlisch to write music and Rupert Holmes to do book and lyrics.”
Vermont Indie Bookseller Is Print-On-Demand Guinea Pig
“The Northshire Bookstore, in quaint Manchester Center, Vt., has all the classic trappings: exposed beams, wood tables stacked with hardcover bestsellers, comfortable leather chairs nestled into alcoves.” It also has a print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine, a first for an independent bookstore in the U.S. If its experiment is successful, “it will show how small brick-and-mortar bookshops might be able to match the overwhelming variety of products offered by a giant online retailer like Amazon.com.”
Six-Year B’way Run Of Avenue Q Will End In September
“Broadway tuner ‘Avenue Q’ will shutter in the fall after a run of six years. Comedy, in which a cast of humans and puppets play twentysomethings struggling to find their way in New York City, was one of the first of a new generation of small-scale offerings that carved out a stable foothold on a Rialto landscape more often associated with splashier fare.”
Angry Alice Hoffman Tweets Book Critic’s Phone Number
Furious about a negative Boston Globe review, novelist Alice Hoffman took to Twitter to write nasty things about the critic, whose phone number and e-mail address she gave out. “Tell her what u think of snarky critics,” she tweeted. But Hoffman “comes off like an aspiring literary gang leader, dispensing orders 140 characters at a time.” And not being all that cautious about those characters, either: She got the critic’s phone number wrong.
In LA, One Stella Adler School Squares Off Against Another
“Why are two schools that were founded by the same person — and that teach the same acting technique — competing with each other? Leaders at both said that simple economics plays an important role. In a city bursting with aspiring actors, there’s money to be made for a school with an aggressive agenda.”
46 Nations Pledge Better Effort To Return Nazi-Looted Art
“After a Prague meeting on Holocaust-era assets, delegates will tomorrow endorse a non-binding accord, promising to conduct more provenance research on art in public collections, to open public archives and to ensure that claimants have access to ‘just and fair’ solutions and speedy consideration of their claims.”