Cutbacks End Columbia’s Arts Journalism Program

By Simi Horwitz
  
“Nothing that happens in a university is necessary,” says Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. “If Columbia were destroyed in a terrorist attack, life would go on. The real question isn’t ‘Is a particular program necessary?’ but rather ‘How does it add value?’ And the National Arts Journalism Program was valuable in marrying craft and knowledge in a setting that has access to the arts capital, the best arts journalists, and the rest of Columbia University. The NAJP gave arts journalists context, which helped them understand specifics.”

So why after 11 years is the NAJP closing on July 1? That is a complicated question involving funding cutbacks, personalities, and the byzantine world of academic politics. András Szántó, director of the NAJP, did not want to address the particulars of what happened. Others interviewed for this story were relentlessly circumspect. Participants on all sides asserted that they “understood” and “appreciated” the problems faced by those whose actions they clearly disagree with.

But all agreed that the trouble began when the Pew Charitable Trusts, which had contributed millions of dollars to the program, decided two years ago to put its money elsewhere.

“It was a difficult decision,” says Marian Godfrey, director of civic life initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “We were proud of the program because it made a strong statement about arts journalism. But having run it for close to 10 years — a long time for any foundation to be involved in any one program — and having spent between $10 million and $11 million, we felt we needed to use our scarce resources in other ways.”

Since 1994, the NAJP has hosted an estimated 130 arts journalists — reporters and critics — from across the country. Admission was competitive; writers accepted into the two-semester program as either senior or midcareer fellows used the resources of Columbia University to study theatre, literature, history, and other subjects and were encouraged to view the city as their campus. A goal of the program was to broaden the knowledge and boost the professionalism of its participants. Some senior fellows were already stars in their fields, like Margo Jefferson and Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times and Harvard’s Robert Brustein, theatre critic for The New Republic. But most fellows, especially at the midcareer level, worked at smaller periodicals, though a fair number moved on to more-prestigious publications following their time at the program.

In addition to its fellowships, the NAJP presented an array of conferences addressing the concerns of nonprofit cultural institutions, arts service organizations, and arts funders. Its final gathering, “Measuring the Muse: Arts Research From the Frontlines,” was held on May 5.

While the Pew Charitable Trusts felt that it had to return to its original mission of funding local artists and arts institutions, during the past two years the organization continued to provide the NAJP with money in the hope that the program could locate other resources. And according to ArtsJournal.com editor-in-chief Douglas McLennan, a former NAJP fellow and a member of its advisory board, those resources were indeed found.

“But when the dean made the decision to discontinue the program, there wasn’t enough money in place,” he says. “And by the time we had come up with funds, he had already made his decision. He was concerned with putting money in an ad hoc way into programs that did not have a major endowment. We were able to fund the program through this year with various projects, but it was just a stopgap.”

Lemann does not dispute McLennan’s contention, stressing that the many non-degree-conferring programs housed at Columbia routinely seek out funding mechanisms that fall outside of tuition. “The Pulitzer Prizes, for example, are fully endowed,” he says. “Foundations fund other programs and typically they run for a few years and then they stop. There’s nothing unusual about it.”

What is unusual is that Columbia, under the leadership of President Lee C. Bollinger, is firmly committed to the arts and to arts journalism in particular. In fact, Bollinger has been instrumental in reshaping the Graduate School of Journalism to provide its graduates with more-specialized training beyond the craft of writing a story. Next semester, for example, the school will offer a master’s degree in the arts.

Of all those interviewed for this story, Randall Bourscheidt, president of Alliance for the Arts, a nonprofit arts advocacy group, is the most openly enraged by the demise of the NAJP. “One of the saddest parts of this story is that Columbia University has failed to save a program that has reflected so well on it,” he says. “Its inability to come up with the money is a failure of judgment. This is a tragic loss for American journalism and the arts community, especially in New York, which has benefited from NAJP’s conferences.”

The Larger Picture

Just as the NAJP is shutting its doors, there is a growing realization at some academic institutions that arts journalists face new challenges today and need special training. Both Boston University and NYU now offer concentrations in cultural reporting, and in July Syracuse University will debut the Goldring Arts Journalism Program, a master’s degree program with concentrations in writing about architecture, film, fine arts, music, and theatre.

Johanna Keller, the program’s director, observes, “The level of expectation has changed in terms of how the arts are covered. Editors complain that critics are not trained journalists, while the critics complain that the editors and publishers don’t understand the arts.” And that lack of training and understanding has brought the profession to a crossroads, giving rise to these new programs.

But the universities are not alone. The National Endowment for the Arts has launched a program for arts critics, who will gather for 10-day to two-week workshops at Duke University, UCLA, and Columbia to address the future of arts criticism in the belief that at many newspapers, the role of the arts critic is either being eliminated or filled by freelance writers. According to Douglas Sonntag, the NEA’s director of national initiatives, “The quality and quantity of criticism is declining.”

NAJP director András Szántó agrees, at least in part. For arts journalism, he says, “it’s the best of times and the worst of times. It’s the worst of times in the uncertainty, anxiety, insecurity, and dislocation facing arts journalists in institutions that are being staffed by outsourced freelancers with pay scales that are comparable to artists. Within news organizations, they’re trying to keep up with an arts world that is being marginalized.

“It is the best of times,” he contends, “in that the universe of arts coverage is expanding in radio, magazines, on the Internet. Self-publishing is unprecedented,” and new technology offers arts writers a host of new venues for their work.

“There are more voices and more points of entry,” he says. “That is a hopeful sign, even if that means there’s also more stupidity. The rising level of arts participation and the increasingly educated and wealthy population are also good signs. But in today’s pluralistic arts world, it’s more confusing and the critic’s role is transforming. The greatest cultural irony of our time is that the diversity and accessibility are enormous. On the other hand, the sense of mission and excitement are no longer there. When the art generates the excitement, the criticism will follow.”

There is still much to explore in the evolving world of arts journalism, he suggests, making the NAJP’s shuttering a particularly numbing blow.