1. Arts and
Entertainment
Coverage

2. Discussion
1. What does arts and entertainment news cover?
2. Where do you find arts and entertainment
coverage?
3. How does it compare with general news
coverage?

3. Arts and entertainment covers CULTURE!
This type of news is focused on what society is interested in,
including music, movies/films, books, television, theater, and art and
design. It also concerns itself with the people involved in all of these
elements of culture, typically called artists, public figures, or
celebrities.

4. High Culture vs. Low Culture
Entertainment coverage typically focuses on what is called “low culture,”
more commonly known as popular culture.
Popular Culture
Cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited
to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people.
Arts coverage tends to focus more on “high culture”, which is the
opposite of popular culture. It is typically considered more elitist
because it is assumed that less people are interested.

5. Arts and Entertainment has a “place” on all major news websites…
CNN
Washington Post
Fox News
ABC
CBS

6. Discussion: Focus on High Culture or Pop Culture? (CBS)

7. Did you notice?
• Focus on celebrities: popular culture
• “Buy two and half men mug”: advertisements for popular culture
• See arrow: One of the only examples of high culture, an upcoming performance
at the Kennedy Center, has to be sponsored?

8. On CNN’s entertainment homepage, there are several examples of how popular culture is emphasized.

9. An Exception to the Rule:
New York Times
Most news websites introduce arts and entertainment news as
“entertainment” on their home page, as we saw on the slide
discussing placement. Even in looking at how the New York Times
introduces arts and entertainment news on their home page (seen
left), it is clear that this organization takes a more serious stance on
this type of coverage.

10. Lorne Manly (seen on the left), the entertainment editor of The New York Times
answered viewers’ questions about entertainment coverage. One question
focused on how this news organization balances coverage of high culture and
low culture, and Manly’s answer gave a key example on the difference between
how this news organization covers pop culture in comparison to how tabloids
cover it.

11. Dwindling Coverage of High Arts
Despite the fact that interest in high arts has not diminished, the amount of coverage of
high art has significantly decreased over the years.
Doug McLennan, editor of the online arts news service ArtsJournal.com: “Dance coverage
in most newspapers is very, very small, yet the number of participants worldwide is
increasing. There are 250,000 choruses in the U.S., but you wouldn’t know it by reading
most American newspapers.”
In an article in The Seattle Times: “From 1992 to 1997, King County's population grew 5.5
percent - and the audience attending nonprofit cultural events grew 28 percent. Total
attendance in 1997, the last year tallied by the King County Corporate Council for the
Arts, was more than for the Seahawks, Mariners and Sonics combined. That doesn't
include commercial enterprises like galleries, rock concerts and Broadway shows.”
Why?
Since interest is clearly not the problem, what is causing this lack of high arts coverage?

12. Consumerism
“The arts criticism in most national magazines, in nearly all newspapers around the country,
and even in the arts weeklies has become shorter in length and lighter in tone — where it
has survived at all — and the concerns of much of the critical writing published both in print
and online have grown progressively commercial: What to watch? What to buy? Is the
movie worth the cost of admission? Is the book worth the cover price?”
Alisa Solomon, the director of the Arts and Culture program at the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism, essentially said the problem is “the idea that anything
that’s worthwhile pay for itself. In an environment where there’s disdain for expertise, and
where intelligent conversation about a topic is considered elitist and therefore
oppressive, critics look not only dispensable, but somehow evil or wrong. Our attitudes
toward the arts have been framed within this notion that they have to have some kind of
utilitarian or commercial value, and we're losing our ability to talk about them in other
terms."
Source

13. News vs. Entertainment
“News content tends to be studied apart from entertainment content. Yet, the line
between the two forms is increasingly blurred.”
-Rebecca Ann Lind and David L. Rarick in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics
Source: Mass Communication and Society

14. Newsworthiness and Demand
• “[N]ews about the war in Iraq rests firmly at the
top, and…a diversity of news material is important
to audiences…news media have a responsibility
to provide audiences not only with what they
need, but what they want” (627).
• What do audiences want? A spectrum of news
that includes everything from politics to celebrity
gossip. Arts and entertainment coverage provides
a relief from more serious news topics.