Where do you go to get your critical arts comment in 'the regions' these days? It's obviously something us ex Metro types discuss at regular intervals nine months on. The answer is sketchy, a mish-mash of favoured blogs and the odd well considered review in The Guardian. The honest truth is that I'd do more critical arts commenting on Manchester's scene myself if I genuinely felt that the voice of one person posting on Blogger was going to be important stuff. No-one really cares what Ben East thinks, but when Ben East is writing for Metro, or the FT, they might.
But it's an interesting time of flux for regional arts journalism - reflected by two recent pieces that attempt to get to the heart of the issue. Kate Feld's excellent article on Creative Times (full disclosure: I've done some work for them too) suggests that the local blogger does have merit in that they are fresh, immediate and accessible. Lyn Gardner in The Guardian thinks that the web offers space for theatre criticism in every city and region, alongside professional reviewers. Although this is at the bottom of a piece which tries to argue that their reviews aren't London-centric.
The key is the phrase 'professional reviewers'. Did I count myself as one at Metro? When I was reviewing four shows a day at Edinburgh, absolutely. And Kate's admission, that blogs are often 'unpolished to readers weaned on national arts criticism', is my major problem. We all have our favourite writers on newspapers - and some we hate - but they are filtered through the reputation of the publication. Odd really: A.blogger and Lyn Gardner might write exactly the same thing, but you read Gardner and parrot Gardner's views at dinner parties because she's paid money to have them. A.Blogger is just A.Blogger. He says, blogging.
Still, Lyn Gardner is not going to write about everything in Manchester and you have to wonder, what with cut backs aplenty, who is? It's got to the point where the galleries are essentially producing their own arts website to publicise, and critically appraise, their own shows - because they can't just hope someone out there might write about them. Creative Tourist (who I also have written for) is this interesting solution - and the quality is high, because they've employed quality journalists (and me) to write for them, without telling them what to write.
Kate's solution is a Manchester aggregator, where blogs from across the city are published on a single curated site which could, in the end, form a print version. I like this idea (and this isn't a plea to be included - I'm the flakiest of bloggers) simply because it promotes the idea of writing for a purpose, for an audience, rather than for yourself. That makes it sound awful: "I write because I must be heard!" But it would encourage better, critical comment on the city's arts scene if people knew their work was being read and enjoyed - and also, you'd hope, encourage people to go and see the gig/show/art in question.
All of which has encouraged me to write about Dutch Uncles and FUC51. So watch out for that, in a bit...
