#EDFRINGE 2023 – Young Writers Scheme is not a solution.

Today, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society announced a new scheme to recruit young writers into the world of arts journalism. It’s a well intended scheme, matching young scribblers with a range of prominent publications from The Scotsman to The Wee Review. There’s mentorship on offer, plus a week’s worth of reviewing on the Fringe.

The Fringe Society says, ‘The Fringe Society’s new pilot project aims to promote arts journalism as an attractive and viable career choice for emerging talent.’ This will, it hopes be an antidote to the declining volume of arts coverage being published now, as opposed to before the pandemic.

The Fringe Society’s Good Intentions

If there were a viable world of well-paid opportunities going unfilled, this would indeed be a valuable endeavour. However, the truth is that that, in the main, arts journalism simply doesn’t pay for the vast majority of those who undertake it.

The few exceptions can be found in the traditional outlets: established newspapers, and industry publications such as The Stage, but their numbers are dwindling. Despite reviews and arts news being vital to the health of the cultural sector, the public are as interested in paying for such content as they are for the news in general. That is to say, they are overwhelmingly unwilling.

Take TheQR, where compliments on the quality of writing and diversity of coverage hit my inbox every week. Despite a healthy multi-thousand strong readership every month, the site’s advertising revenue is fairly paltry, and appeals for tips via Ko-Fi are generally met with silence. This isn’t an unusual state of affairs within the independent media sector which now shoulders a huge portion of the cultural journalism sector.

I’m sure some outlets are doing far better than The QR, and indeed there is a business plan to make this site economically viable, as opposed to a passion project. However, as things stand the arts journalism sector will continue to shrink, until and unless there is a societal shift in appreciation of our contribution.

This need for chance extends to the arts creating industry. No matter the quality of content, our major professional bastions of the arts remain obsessed by what we shall call legacy media.

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What happens if nothing changes?

The consquences will be fairly dire. The number of professional, or professionally-minded critics will continue to diminish. Those acting outside the few paid roles remaining will neccessarily be hobbyists drawn from the ranks of the independently wealthy, where financial security rather than talent is the primary qualification.

Some sites run by the less solvent will survive, but the pressures to generate traffic will only grow. The need to create click-bait in place of quality will swell, and the standard of reviewing sacrificed in the eternal hunt for clicks. The QR genuinely seeks out the new, and undiscovered, but when finalising my August review schedule, a healthy number of the site’s review bookings stem from estimated traffic, as much as perceptions of merit. Would that it were not so.

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Maybe Arts Criticism is doomed to become amateur

It’s entirely possible, of course, that nothing will change, and that the income available from being an arts journalist will collapse ever nearer to zero. It’s true that nothing I, or any critic does, is essential to your daily life, and that the world wouldn’t end if we simply went away. That is also true of most businesses from coffee shops to hairdressers.

You might argue that we choose to give our work away for free (and a llttle advertising revenue), but there’s simply no current alternative for most of us, or the arts criticism industry. The public hates paywalls, and big advertisers pay peanuts to niche content creators.

Maybe, then, arts journalism is fated to become more hobby than profession. However whilst the world isn’t short of amazing hobbyists in all sorts of pursuits, very few ever approach the proficiency of professionals in their field. Were there no qualitiative difference, folks would turn out to watch Sunday League Football as readily as their local pro-team; Am-Dram performances would pack out the West End, being far cheaper to produce for the Cameron Mackintosh’s of the world.

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How to keep professional arts criticism alive

Honestly, I’m not sure. The Titans of Wapping aren’t offering any clues, and The Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s emerging critics programme isn’t a solution either. Maybe sites achieving a certain standard could become eligible for arts funding? Perhaps bodies such as the Fringe Society could set up a scheme to help us make rent?

In the meantime, if good quality, professionally-produced arts criticism matters to you, then tip. If The QR offers a valuable service to you, then please click the tip button. If just a few hundred of the thousands of readers who visit this site every month tossed in £1 or even £2, it could do so much more, reach so much more work, and discover many more amazing artists. It would also guard against the day when all the love for the arts in the universe isn’t enough to justify hundreds of hours of work every year that don’t pay the rent.

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