Get Cracking on Arts Coverage

Bostonist was surprised to read the Boston Herald headline “Hotline: Get a crack at ‘The Nutcracker’.” From recent features in the Herald we’ve come to expect more racy headlines like “Get Crack at ‘The Nutcracker’.” The Boston Ballet production is playing on Washington St. in the Theatre District at the Opera House, close to the Common and the darker streets of Boston at night. We hoped we’d find a bit of juice in the Herald blurb, unfortunately no candid shots of drug deals, just a heads up on an appearance of some Nutcracking characters at Copley Place Center.

Bostonist has already run into the Nutcracker and the Mouse King when we made our way to Downtown Crossing on “Black Friday.” Ascending the escalators to on our way to take advantage of the deep discounts on a new pillow at Filene’s we were held up a bit on the third floor where shoppers were pausing for the retail photo ops. It’s after Thanksgiving, who would we be if we weren’t expecting to see a production of the Nutcracker crop up in any number of places. But perhaps this is the fate of the arts coverage in Boston--a heavily commercially backed production gets coverage from the Boston Herald.

According to Bill Marx in a recent post at the WBUR’s Arts Blog, local arts coverage in the Boston Globe is taking the option. Arts staff is taking the buyouts offered by the Globe in an effort to avoid layoffs at the paper. With the death of Go! as a daily feature and the spawn of Sidekick that no one seems to have taken a liking to Marx points to increased competition from the blogosphere. We like to think it’s folks like Bostonist’s old friend Modern Kicks and one of our newest pals at HubArts that are giving the old print media folks the squeeze.