By  Ardua Harris
AASFE Diversity Fellow

In 1983, the finale for the television show MASH attracted 106 million viewers. In 2004, the “Friends” finale had 52 million.
   These numbers illustrate the fragmentation of pop culture, according to Doug  McLennan, who presented “A New Model for Arts Journalism,” at the AASFE conference on Thursday. McLennan is the founder of artsjournal.com, an aggregate site of arts writing. Mass culture strategies are being utilized in a niche culture time, he said.
    Mass pop culture -- television, music, movies, books -- are not the uniting force that they once were. In today’s niche world, they often only reach a small percentage of the population. There isn’t pop culture that everyone knows about anymore, he said.
    The definition of  mass culture may need to be expanded. McLennan offered these statistics: People magazine has 3.7 million readers, but the New Yorker isn’t far behind with 1.1 million. Rush Limbaugh is the radio king with 13.5 million listeners, but NPR’s Morning Edition also has almost 13 million listeners, too.
     In essence, there’s been a reordering of the cultural landscape. Mass pop culture is losing, but the arts are expanding, said McLennan. “We still write about the struggling arts when they’ve increased,” he said. Museum attendance is rising, as is turnout for classical music performances. Twelve percent of iTune downloads are for classical music. 
 
Here are some of  suggestions McLennan offered to help improve arts coverage:

• Reorganize for the digital age. Why is your editor uploading jpegs? Hire a digital assistant who can take care of traffic. Let your editor think about content.
• One of the biggest missed opportunities for newspapers is developing an uncomplicated way online for readers to find out  what’s going on tonight.
• Learn from the Net bubble. You can’t be everything to everybody. Do things that you decide are important, and do them very well.
• Define your world view. Why is this story important? What is the culture of the community? Make stories relate in some way to this culture. Build a community around what you’re trying to do.
• Let editors be editors. Focus on content rather than traffic. What do you want your publication to be?