Has everybody seen this post by Geoff Edgers, one of the best arts reporters in the country (he writes for the Boston Globe)?

So should a music critic allow an institution he covers to set his poems to music - and pay his expenses? I say not, as does the Boston Globe's ethics policy. The Boston Phoenix disagrees.

I raise this after reading these blog entries from Lloyd Schwartz, the alternative weekly's music critic. In them, he mentions the "delightful invitation from the Boston Symphony Orchestra" to have his poems set to music by the Tanglewood Music Center's composition fellows. Schwartz signed a contract with the BSO-run TMC, according to his blog ("The Tanglewood Music Center was actually paying me for my services"), and, in anticipation of his visit, noted that he would be staying for free at the Tanglewood guest house Seranak, the former home of legendary BSO music director Serge Koussevitzky. "I was even going to be reimbursed for my gas mileage!" Schwartz wrote.

Am I being too harsh in calling out Schwartz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1994 and is also an accomplished poet?

Peter Kadzis, The Phoenix's editor doesn't see anything wrong with it, as he told Edgers:

Schwartz "works in the now waning tradition of artist/critic, not unlike Virgil Thomson. That the Tanglewood fellows would choose to set his poetry to music is a mark of distinction, not a compromise.

Journalistic ethics and all, yes. But it's more complicated than that. There is a long tradition of artist/critics, but not today. In fact, some papers like the New York Times as a matter of policy don't publish pieces by artists who also might be critics. Critics like Peter Plagens who was/is a working artist while a critic at Newsweek are rare.

I suppose the thinking is that artists who are trying to work are compromised because they might promote their own work.

But it seems to me there's something valuable lost by the artist ban. It's a missing perspective in the American press. In the UK it's not. There, artists are regularly invited onto the pages of leading newspapers to express opinions about issues or write about work. Nicholas Serota runs the Tate, and we all know he'll give the Tate point of view, but he is also an important voice who should be heard, and not just about issues that affect the Tate.

Dominic Dromgoole runs the Globe Theatre but has also been a prominent critic. Nicholas Kenyon ran the Proms but is also an engaging writer about music. Okay, so all three primarily make their livings in their art, but banishing them from the pages of newspapers would be a loss. And does anyone think that readers of their work will be tricked by some self-interest? Authors write about books all the time. John Updike is arguably a better essayist than novelist, but should he be disqualified from writing about novels? Outside the arts, Bill Kristol is a columnist for the New York Times while he reportedly continues to consult for members of the Bush administration. Is that a conflict?

If the Phoenix casts Lloyd Schwartz, who is a graceful and interesting writer about music (and he did win a Pulitzer), as an artist/critic, I think they're offering something different and potentially interesting. Do they need to make Schwartz's afilliations transparent? Absolutely. Should he be writing about the Boston Symphony? No, but Geoff's post didn't make clear whether he would be.

One thing is clear. As arts journalism becomes more and more a freelance profession, the lines of ethical conflict are going to get more and more tangled. Should the rules for critics, who, unlike reporters, are in the opinion business after all, be the same as for reporters who are not?

Since I read it two weeks ago, I've been trying to think of a respectful way to respond to Martin Bernheimer's cri de coeur in the Financial Times about the extinction of music critics. I admire Martin, and I share his alarm over the disappearance of arts journalism in the traditional media (not "mainstream media or MSM," a term I've always hated, and one which increasingly doesn't describe newspapers' shrinking fortunes). 

He's right about the shortsightedness of news organizations in cutting arts coverage and about the effect its loss will have on them and on the wider culture:

Historically, the best critics have guarded standards, stimulated debate and, in the complex process, reinforced the importance of art in society. They have been tastemakers, taskmasters and possibly ticket-sellers. Some have even written well. Despite automatic controversy, they played a role in aesthetic checks and balances. If their opinions were important, the reasons behind them were more important.

But he puts the blame for this mass extinction in the wrong place, I think. The internet isn't killing arts journalism. In fact, I think the internet offers the best last hope for arts journalism. But first, here's more of a flavor of Martin's argument:

A primary cause of our imminent extinction must be the internet. An impatient generation is succumbing to the free and easy lure of computer enlightenment. Sure, not all those who cover the arts in old-fashioned print are paragons - still, most do have sufficient education and/or experience to justify their views. On the web, anyone can impersonate an expert. Anyone can blog. Credentials don't count. All views are equal. Some sort of criticism may survive the American media revolution, but professional criticism may not.

Essentially, our civilisation is tilting towards anti-authoritarian contests. Audiences, not judges, select winners. Call it the American Idolisation of culture. On TV, contestants get voted off without explanation. Quality is measured by thumbs, up or down. Scholarly analyses have turned into irrelevant extravagances for snobs.

Many US papers have abandoned thoughtful, detailed reviews altogether. Publishers, editors and, presumably, readers want instant evaluations and newsbites, preferably with flashy pictures. It is Zagat-think, simplicity for the simple-minded.

This is a familiar argument: We have standards. We have credentials. We've had a system to vet quality. If you know the system, it's easy to understand the hierarchy of quality and authority. Critics X's opinion in the New York Times or LA Times is worth more than Critic Y's in the Johnny Falls Daily News. A system of official critics and editors and publications lends authority to judgments of quality. So take away that system and what do you have? Chaos, surely. Remember that famous New Yorker cartoon with the picture of the dog in front of a computer: "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog". Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can get on and express an opinion.

And they do. And how will you know if that opinion is any good or not? And worse - if everyone weighs in and we're so crushed by the volume, how will anyone have the time or interest to read more complicated arguments? If the easy opinion dominates (even if that "opinion" consists of nothing more than texting a vote for Your Next American Idol) will there be anyone left to write those more complicated or informed criticism? Will there be an audience for it? And even if there is, how will readers find the experts?

Martin suggests that this new free-for-all produces a culture of lazy consumers who don't know and/or don't care about quality. The thumbs-up has as much weight as the Financial Times Sunday essay.

This is undoubtedly true for a huge number of people. But perhaps those people weren't paying attention before anyway. And so what if this easy insta-expert business is nothing more than a way to get people paying attention, even at the most basic level? Look at the dance shows on TV right now. Who thought people would watch dance? Yet Dancing with the Stars and So you think you can Dance have been at the top of the ratings. They've occasionally been the most-watched shows on their nights. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but more people than ever have been at least watching some form of dance in the past year. Anything wrong with that?

Anything that encourages people to respond to art (even it's just voting) is a good thing. Too many people (believe it or not) are afraid to express an opinion about that symphony or ballet they've just heard. We elevated the expert opinion about the arts to such a high level that many "regular" people were afraid to express an opinion because they weren't experts.

But I think the larger answer to Martin's concern is that human nature doesn't change that much. The reason critics have been important is because we have a need to find people who can help guide us to the "good" stuff. That need hasn't gone away; to the contrary, we need that kind of help now more than ever. The volume of art available to us now is greater than ever before. Everywhere a wail of complaints has gone up about being overwhelmed by how much there is.

Two final points: First - I think the ocean of creative work out there forces people to become more sophisticated in order to deal with it, not less. Don't mistake quick judgment for short attention spans. With more things competing for our attention, we can afford to be pickier. And we are. We have also expanded our cultural palates, and our tastes and expertise are more wide-ranging than they used to be. Some culture we like we engage with only casually (again the voting), while other culture we devote more of our attentions.

Second - I think the that what's happening here as far as criticism goes is not the disappearance of good critics, but the realignment of critical authority.In a way, we are coming out of the Model T era of criticism. In most cities in this country, the number of arts critics narrowed to less than a handful over the past decade. Our traditional structure of bestowing critical authority in the press had become threadbare. A lot of what has passed for arts journalism has been on auto-pilot. Want proof? We're not seeing significant protests from the arts community as critics are eliminated at local papers.

So where do you find the new critical authority? One answer is that you-the-reader have to work harder. First, because of the internet, we have more access to critics at traditional publications all over the planet. Living in Seattle, I couldn't read the LA Times regularly before the internet came along. Now I can make a daily habit of stories in the Times, The Guardian, The Age, and dozens of other excellent publications. I have to have criteria in this expanded menu for who I want to pay attention to.

Technorati currently tracks 300,000 arts blogs. Many (most) aren't very interesting. But some are. Many are. Slowly the landscape is realigning and signs of where authority lives are becoming more visible. And I think readers are becoming more and more sophisticated about how to find it. For those who aren't? Well, they probably never were.

Nothing is as tedious as solemn pronouncements about humor. Seemingly everyone, from Barack Obama and John McCain and David Remnick to op-eders and talking heads everywhere, has weighed in on the July 21 New Yorker cover with Obama as a Muslim and Michelle as a terrorist, and I do mean weigh. So here are some parting shots:

1. Like most people, I first saw this cover as a postage-stamp-sized illustration on the Internet (I suppose others saw it held up on TV). Either way, the obvious satirical intent was blurred when all you saw was the central figures in miniature. The actual cover, with half of Osama bin Laden's face above the fireplace and with the American flag burning in the fireplace below, plus the details of the Oval Office, signals the satiric intent loud and clear.

2. Maybe too loud? Whether it's actually funny is another matter. An art director I know suggested that it might have been sharpered with Cheney and/or Bush leering in through a window. Maybe.

3. The furious initial response from the Obama campaign seemed a little, well, humorless. Better to shrug it off, as Obama did, tho he had his peeps registering the requisite moral outrage.

4. And yet, as reinforced by a recent TV sampling of supposed lifelong Democrats at various baseball games all saying they would vote for McCain because everyone knew Obama was a Muslim, it is a dangerous area in which to tread. Who will get the joke?

5. But how many people who know Obama is a Muslim read the New Yorker, anyhow?

6. The New York Post, which runs the stupidest, crudest political cartoons anywhere, picked up on a wonderful one from the Cincinnati Enquirer. A satire of Saul Steinberg's famous 1976 New Yorker cover showing a New Yorker's (satirical) view of America, with only a few sketchy, cliched landmarks visible west of the Hudson, it showed a cover with "Satire-Free Edition" emblazoned beneath the New Yorker logo and a map of the United States stretching from east to west exactly as you would see it on a real map. THAT was funny.

7.Let's lighten up, guys 'n' gals, and move on to the next scurilous political distraction, of which there will be many between now and November. 

Edgar Vincent's death three weeks ago saddened me personally and professionally. Edgar was 90, and had been looking frail. He had many clients in the classical music world, opera singers especially. I knew him best through our shared relationship with and affection for Beverly Sills, and I can't help but think Beverly's death took something out of Edgar from which he never recovered.

As most of the deeply sympathetic obits and articles about him attested, Edgar had an old-world charm and a shadowy (as in the The Shadow Knows) aura of an International Man of Mystery. How could it have been otherwise with a full name like Edgar Vincent Julius Raffaelle Simone Pos? He was knowledgeable, discreet yet honest. He cared about his clients asnd he cared about the truth. His clients cared about him, and relied on him. He was a gentleman. When Beverly died, I spoke with him a few days later and he was in despair about her failure to attend properly to preventative medicine.

Edgar's death set me to thinkng about publicists. Ideally there should be a certain tension between press and publicists, but that relationship changes with the personality and position on each side of the divide. Press agents who represent famous clients spend more of their time warding off the press than hustling for stories, let alone Page Six mentions. Of late some of the big-name Hollywood press agents, those who demand copy and photo approval and guaranteed covers, have become awesomely obnoxious. Junior critics and reporters, or those working for marginal outlets (like, now, the blogs to which I contribute), can expect dismissive treatment from most press agents, who spend much of their time fending off requests for free tickets. Writers for major publications like the New York Times get fawned over, or at least treated courteously.

When I was Martin Bernheimer's assistant at the Los Angeles Times in the early 70's, I deeply appreciated, and never forgot, the friendly treatment I got from Sheila Porter, then head of publicity at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. No doubt she treated me nicely because of Martin, or maybe she had a certain sympathy for struggling critics because of her brother Andrew. Many regarded her, then and later in New York, as a dragon lady. I remembered past kindnesses.

I've always felt a key to any publicist's personality was how they handled the little guys. When I was first at the New York Times and Harold Schonberg was the chief classical music critic, he invited us junior critics to a lunch he hosted for a retiring publicist. Can't remember her name and it would be impolite to mention it if I did. She treated Harold well, and he liked her. He thought of her as a friend, and maybe she was. But she was a monster to us small fry (if anyone working for the Times can be considered small fry), and we (especially I) hated her. Harold wanted us to write admiring thoughts on a farewell card; but I churlishly refused.

In rock, the king of publicistrs in the 70's was Paul Wasserman, who had a simply amazing client list. As a friend of Linda Ronstadt's, I dealt with him often. But my closest contact was via the Rolling Stones. Paul's ability to juggle their demands and arrogance with the importuing press hordes was amazing. He was a clever, witty man, given to "purchasing": favored critics' friendships through a daily barrage of amusing and informative press clippings (access to the not-yet-invented e-mail would have made him drunk with power). Eventually he succumbed to cocaine and greed, but at his height he was a great representative of the PR breed.

Dave Reuben at the Metropolitan Opera was a very different sort, constantly criticized by Joe Volpe for being too recesssive, too mousily polite. I admired him for not trying to shove stories down my throat, for being helpful and informative when asked, and for a politeness that approached Edgar's. Ditto Susan Woelzl at the New York City Opera, who's still at it, bless her.

Past relationships carry over into the present, as with me and Sheila Porter. Thirty years ago, when my pal Ms. Ronstadt was in "The Pirates of Penzance" in Central Park and then on Broadway, I established a relationship with Richard Kornberg, a publicist for theater and now dance. Richard strikes some the wrong way, whiny and importuning. I like him; he's friendly and helpful, and transparent when he wants something. But my affection for him dates back to "Pirates," a happy experience for us all.

I could go on. And on. The sometimes acerbic but always intelligent Ellen Jacobs in dance. My pal Kim Smedvig (born Hessberg, now Taylor, as in James) at the Boston Symphony. And no doubt many others whose names don't leap immediately to mind.

While the basic tension does and should exist between writers and the representatives of the written about, it's not surprising that friendships and respect like this should arise. Young people who love the arts find no easy career path into the field. Some become writers, some publicists, some managers or agents or curators. They share a passion that often overrides any supposed division of responsibilities. And rightly so.

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Unlike most of my colleagues, I don't know many musicians. Although I have my small share of '60s stories--hey, Pete Townshend gave me and Ellen Willis a lift to the Woodstock site in his limo, how cool is that?--getting to know the stars has never been a social goal for me. Why? Just say I value friendship too much and leave it at that. Because I value friendship, however, there are a few exceptions--organic relationships I would consider it immoral to sever. I met saxophonist Roy Nathanson when he was Ray Dobbins's teenaged boyfriend, got to know the endlessly friendly Peter Stampfel because we had the same chiropractor, shared early child-rearing with Robert Sietsema of the now defunct Mofungo, and through that connection saw my trumpet-moonlighting brother-in-law join the long-running NYC postpunk band The Scene Is Now. Since the idea of the Consumer Guide is that it's both encyclopedic and concise, so that my readers assume that when I skip something it's a dis, this has meant I've had to write about records involving all of the above without the polite ploy of full disclosure. Stampfel I consider a genius (usually), The Scene Is Now (sorry, guys, hope you don't read this) a worthwhile hobby, and my coverage or lack of it reflects my judgments, which I hope remain responsibly objective.

So what am I to do about Menya? Menya is one of a dozen or more musical enterprises launched by students at NYU's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music to have given me a demo. (Many others have not. My course is required, so I teach everyone in the program, generally in their sophomore years.) I always listen, just about never relisten. If asked, I proffer my opinion, candidly put as is my professional practice. (This may be why few ask.) REMU profs whose specialties are artistic have different obligations, as I see it--they have to help improve the engineering, the packaging, the marketing, whatever. I teach history and writing, so I don't. What am I to do about Menya?

Menya comprises an NYU '09 whose Missy Elliott paper was way Latinate, an NYU '10 who was one of the most diligent students I've taught, and--graduated from backup singer--an NYU '10 who was was a scholastic flake. The two latter did final papers on Jackson Browne (excellent) and Jefferson Airplane (not so hot), respectively. What would Browne or Grace Slick think of this joyous, raucous, filthy, all-synthesized half-rap half-pop? A hilarious thought.

I love them. My wife loves them. Just to check I had demos sent to three of my editors and they all thought they were pretty great too. So there I was last night in Avenue C's Alphabet Lounge at 8 sharp asking myself why after 40 years I still got to gigs at the announced time. I was the only customer in the place, and remained so for at least 10 minutes. But within 20 minutes there were a few dozen paying customers, half of whom I recognized from NYU. I hadn't pressured anyone to come because I know how crappy baby bands can be. They were anything but crappy. Next time my wife will be with me, and probably an editor friend or two as well. And there will be a next time.

I reviewed Menya's EP--all of which is available gratis at their MySpace page anyway--for the next Consumer Guide at MSN Networks. Made room for some full disclosure. Finding good music is my job, so I feel fine about that. But to be honest, I have no idea what the journalistic ethics of any additional advice or contact making might be. What am I to do about Menya?

I owe Clay Felker my career.

Although Harold Hayes ended up with the editor's job at Esquire and I have nothing but respect for my own first editor there, Byron Dobell, it's my suspicion that even more than those two titans, Clay defined the simultaneously irreverent and writerly '60s Esquire tone and hence made journalism seem like a viable way to write well. Felker's New York was the Sunday supplement at the Herald-Trib when I worked as copyboy there in 1964, and there I first read Tom Wolfe, another inspiration.

A year or so later I was doing suburban police checks at the Newark Star-Ledger when I ran across a Clifton story about a young woman who had starved to death on a macrobiotic diet--a term I recognized because Wolfe had written about it in New York, which enabled me to talk coherently with the bereaved family. Next afternoon I was in New York's Herald-Trib cubicle--was there even a full office? maybe Clay had one--seeking an assignment. Felker gave it to me on spec in about two minutes (no clips, just my spoken pitch) and together with Wolfe, who happened to be around, advised me on how to proceed. You could say he had nothing to lose, and maybe he never expected to see me again, but that wasn't how it felt--it felt like Felker was excited by the subject. Two weeks later I handed in 3000 words, which I'd somehow managed to research and write in my spare time. It was a hit, and Dobell and a few other editors called me up. But Felker kept giving me work as well, sticking with me even though I never did another purely narrative piece of comparable impact. He even invited me and my girlfriend to his famous 57th Street apartment. Once, after the Herald-Trib had morphed into the World Journal Tribune and moved downtown, I handed in some copy there and offered him a ride uptown in my 57 Chevy station wagon. We stopped in Chinatown and had dinner at the long departed Hong Fat. Afterward he took me to a Chinese bakery and suggested I try the melon cake. I still buy melon cakes in Chinatown.

Before we let this bone go, indulge another posting on the Ramiro Burr-Douglas Shannon affair.

For the sake of accuracy, we must acknowledge that our profession has had a long, sad history of publishing ghost-written columns.

Consider a parenthetical before a 1949 entertainment column in the L.A. Times:

("While Hedda Hopper is in Europe her column is being compiled and written by her Hollywood staff.")

Might Mr. Burr have been better served by sharing a byline ... or by warning in parens "When I'm blocked or too lazy to come up with my own prose this column will be compiled and written by someone I rely on and respect but would just as soon not identify"?

Contact Lovell at glovell@aol.com

I'm feeling a little lonely today. Perhaps someone out there can relate: I work for a newspaper that just went berserk because the hometown college baseball team won the NCAA championship.

And I just can't get caught up in the hype.

I know I live in a journalistic world in which sports coverage is king. (And that cultural/arts coverage is a mere deputy earl or something.) And I know that a sizable number of folks in my community are really excited that the Fresno State Bulldogs won. Most are convinced that the rest of the country is awestruck at this mighty "accomplishment." (Never mind that when the baseball season started, the Fresno State team couldn't draw much of a crowd at its home games.) This is the insular nature of sports fandom -- that an underdog win like this  truly is a "historic event." People forget that there are champions every year in a number of different sports, and there's always an underdog story waiting to pop up and fulfill the "dream season" template.

OK, so let the fans have their fun, right? Let them have their bragging rights and their homecoming parade. But I wonder: Is there any limit to how far the local newspaper should go in stoking this hoopla? My paper wiped out the front page and made it into a big photo of the team. I guess I can live with that in the name of sports boosterism. But The Bee didn't even provide a "second" front page inside with real news inside. Not even a special top-of-the-news summary. Instead, the second page was the usual People/Celebrity news and the third page had a big ad.

I hopped on a train recently to visit a friend who left her staff job a few years ago to have kids. Now that she's about to go back to work full-time, she's thinking -- as anyone familiar with the state of the field would be -- of dumping arts journalism for something else.

A chance comment made by an editor quoted in one of these posts a few weeks ago is still nagging at me. Some readers of the Sacramento Bee were disappointed that an opera review was posted online but didn't run in the print edition. Tom Negrete, the managing editor, said the omission was the result of miscommunication. Still, Negrete says that there will be changes in the paper's review philosophy:

Reviews still will be printed in the paper, he said, particularly of shows with multiple performances.

What he wants to stop are reviews of one-night stands, where a performer or event are long gone by the time the review is published.

On the surface, that sounds perfectly reasonable, right? Why waste space for a performance that won't repeat?

Let's answer that with just two words: sports section.