No media standards at The Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington, center, with staff at The Huffington Post

Yesterday my friend Sharon Butler posted a version of her response to My Jerry Saltz Problem on The Huffington Post. With a business model that I find problematic, Arianna Huffington's site is one of my new-media bugaboos. Like you know who on you know what, HuffPost relies on the unpaid content of its writers to add to the cumulative luster to its owner. I'm not the first to say this. Mayhill Fowler wrote the definitive HuffPost protest essay.

Shift change for writers at The Huffington Post

With these thoughts in mind, I wrote a response to Sharon's post that addressed my concerns and uploaded it as a comment on The Huffington Post. It read:

Hi Sharon, I'm glad to see you get to pull the oars at The Huffington Post for some stale breadcrumb­s and the pleasure of the lash (a quote from my article). What still concerns me are those qualities we lose in the migration from print-styl­e production to online. What I mean is the system of editors and fact checkers and a print publication's self-impos­ed brand standards, which serve to guide critical behavior. And then there is print's ability to provide income to the writer. On the upside, the great benefit of online writing and social networking is its low barrier to entry. I also enjoy using new media (and have become addicted to Twitter in particular­). On the downside, online writing offers few of the qualities that have made print great, in particular the ability to provide financial support for people who write for a living. I wrote a summary about the responses to "My Jerry Saltz Problem" (including this essay) here. http://www­.supremefi­ction.com/­theidea/20­11/01/my-j­erry-saltz­-problem-a­ny-solutio­ns.html Also in my forthcomin­g in the February issue of The New Criterion I discuss the upside of online writing for the world of art. Look for it at newcriteri­on.com on February 1.

After an invasive registration process, I pushed the comment button at The Huffington Post last night and waited. And waited. First my comment showed up in the HuffPost's "pending" category. As I waited some more, plenty of other comments went up singing the praises of new media (and by extension The Huffington Post). 

 The office of comment moderation at The Huffington Post

And then this morning, my comment disappeared. Poof! For a time, the staff moderators at HuffPost refused/deleted/turned my comment to soylent green. Just what aspect of their moderation policy did I violate? I am still not sure. Could my comment have disappeared because it was critical of the site? Who knows. It was only after I contacted Sharon directly that HuffJokePost pulled my letter from its shredder and posted it. Erroneously, it said that I had posted it yesterday, even though the comment had just gone up.

Are these the journalistic standards we can expect in the new media revolution? As Lincoln Steffens remarked upon returning from a trip to the Soviet Union in 1919: "I have seen the future, and it works." Not. 

My Jerry Saltz Problem: Any Solutions?

James writes:

Last month's publication of My Jerry Saltz Problem, my essay on art criticism and new media, generated quite a conversation in the circles of, well, art criticism and new media. The article became the most heavily trafficked piece on The New Criterion website. Much of the attention came by way of social media like Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs.

Sadly, I had my last correspondence with the late Denis Dutton over the article, who posted it at Arts and Letters Daily. His wonderful website sent thousands of readers to the article. Our back and forth over the piece is also how I learned of his tragic and terminal diagnosis. He passed away only a few weeks later.

Other sites picked up the essay as well, including Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic, the College Art Association (CAA), and the Economist. Several bloggers also gave it due consideration. The painter and blogger Sharon Butler called my essay "a spiritedly discursive philippic" and wrote a spirited rebuttal on her site Two Coats of Paint (I wrote more about that here). Matthew Miller at Millinerd.com wrote that "the internet should facilitate friendships and cultural encounters, not replace them." The artist Paul McLean at "Artforhumans" said the essay was "An astounding piece of analysis... a must read." The writer Victor Infante called the essay "equal parts honest concern for the art form, reactionary venom and no small degree of jealousy." In her own smart post, Claudine Ise at Artslant wrote that "Panero’s critique is the most persuasive I’ve yet read, though I could have done without some of his prose, which seemed to border on jealous personal attack." It's interesting that in her follow-up, Ise writes of the response from some of Saltz's Facebook Friends: "Dear God, though, many of them sure are the fawning type."

And then there were the hundreds of readers who Tweeted and posted the piece to Facebook. The photographer Damien Franco called it "fantastic reading." Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, a self-described "pissy painter," said he would "post it on [Saltz's] Facebook wall but he dumped me for not commenting enough." 

The critic Jerry Saltz himself, the personality at the center of my cautionary note, used his rollout on Twitter to announce that "Some people's 'Jerry Saltz Problem just acted up. Entertainment Weekly just named me Best New Reality TV Judge' of the year. Hah!" (December 23). He also said that "Chicken Littles and self-styled Savonarolas with 'Jerry Saltz Problems' Baer Fax 'Reader’s Poll' just voted me “Best Art Critic.'" (December 29).

UPDATE! Garcia-Fenech writes in: "In the interest of fairness, I have to add that Jerry Saltz 'friended' me on Facebook after I made that comment about being unfriended, and I then saw that Panero's article had already been posted on his Facebook Wall by someone else. Saltz acknowledges the article and acknowledges that some people like what he's doing and others don't, and adds that that's how it should be, but doesn't respond to specific points raised in the piece."

And there were plenty of excellent comments at The New Criterion site. I wrote about one in particular here (with a great quote from Randall Jarrell).

So, were there any solutions to my "problem"? The responses helped my thinking. In my next New Criterion column, I have written a follow-up to the essay that takes into account the positive potential of art criticism and new media. Again I focus on one personality--in this case, Loren Munk, a painter and video blogger who has been at the center of a new social art criticism. I also look at some current shows including "I Like the Art World and the Art World Likes Me" at the Elizabeth Foundation. Below are two pictures of Munk--one in his studio, the other filming his James Kalm Report at a gallery.

Look for my complete essay at newcriterion.com and in print on February 1.

UPDATE: My "immense self regard" has just been inflated by Artnet! On his Twitter feed, Walter Robinson accuses me of "exactly that" in writing this post--which he quickly learned about, I suspect, by obsessing over his inclusion in "Art Basel Miami Beach Hooverville" by William Powhida and Jade Townsend (I first mentioned this post on a Facebook thread concerning the image). So, self-regard is clearly something Robinson knows. I appreciate his expertise. But I would argue I'm up to something different here than Robinson's own cyber-stalking. In fact, my interest has been to gather and draw attention to everyone else who wrote about the essay--hence, the links--and the mixed response ("reactionary venom...jealousy" etc). What perplexes me is Robinson's own "venom." I can only imagine he is out to settle some old score with Hilton Kramer by proxy. Anyway, I appreciate the link. The conversation continues!

The Literary Committee presents Clinton & Moynihan 'In Conversation'

Tonight, January 18, at 8pm, James Panero will host an open lecture & discussion at the National Arts Club on two new political histories. Few American politicians have been as interesting as President Clinton and the late Senator Moynihan. Both pols crossed party lines to become maverick Democrats, tackling thorny social issues in a way that few others have done since. Both had a style that was all their own. Both proved, once again, that all politics is personal. The Literary Committee of the National Arts Club invites you to rediscover these two magnetic figures with a reading and discussion by the author and editor of two new revealing, "conversational" books: Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, edited by Steven R. Weisman (Yale University Press), and A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him, by Michael Takiff (Public Affairs)