Tom Huang is vice president of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. He is Assistant Managing Editor for Sunday and Enterprise at The Dallas Morning News.
I HAVE OFTEN THOUGHT OF our coverage of arts and features as the conversations we have with our neighbors over the back fence.
These may not be earth-shattering conversations with blaring headlines. They may not be about the day's grim events, the latest body count, the most recent drop in the Dow. They may not involve power or corruption.
But they usually involve stories that are far more emotional. More profound. More thoughtful. More subtle.
They are most likely about the small, powerful moments and ideas that make our lives so rich.
Things like: How we're keeping our families healthy. What we're cooking tonight. What our kids are wearing — kids these days! What our dream vacation is, and how that'll have to wait because we need to remodel the kitchen. What about the interesting and unexpected things that ordinary people in our community are doing?
And let's not forget that latest book, movie, concert, song or play that has resonated with us, the one we want to share with others. Local arts and culture are just as much the lifeblood of a community as sports and business are.
Now newspapers across the country are cutting arts and features staffs, and the sections they produce. Times are turbulent. We are making hard choices.
But know this: As we cut these staffs, we are closing off one potential avenue of our future success.
We are losing one key way of connecting with our readers on digital platforms. Consider all those strong communities of interest — those readers who are passionate about health, food, fashion, house and garden, arts, entertainment and culture.
What will we do as we diminish our expertise, our authoritative and trusted voices? Where will those communities go?
Here are a few other things we may lose:
- Strong storytelling. Many of our strongest writers — and much of our expertise in narrative writing and editing — come from these staffs.
- Innovation. Our arts and feature sections have often been incubators for new approaches, including visual centerpieces, alternative story formats, chunky text, reader participation, narrative series, photo essays and personal essays.
- Leadership. Most arts and feature editors have had to learn how to be creative with limited resources, developing strong leadership skills in the process.
I've often thought of our coverage of arts and features as the conversations we have with our neighbors over the back fence.
And not just that, but also the conversations we have with friends and strangers in cafes, in bars, in coffee shops, in grocery store checkout lines, in barber shops, in nail salons, on soccer fields, in classrooms right before the bell rings.
And now, even though the bell is ringing, we need to make sure that conversation doesn't end. *