Douglas McLennan

Doug is a longtime journalist who writes about journalism, the arts and technology. He's the editor and the founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com and co-founder and editor of Post Alley. He's a frequent keynoter on arts and digital issues, and works and consults for a number of arts and news organizations nationally.

Fighting Yesterday’s Battles over Who Should Pay for Tomorrow’s News

How weird is it that publishers are clamoring to get good placement on the platforms and spending money to do so even as they're screaming that their content is being stolen and demanding the platforms pay them for being featured on their sites?

Traffic Jam: How the Internet Became the Worst of Us

Millions are spent by publishers trying to game the system so that platforms send them readers. When the game’s rules change, as it does from time to time, publishers scramble to figure out the new game.

Rage Against the Machine: Frank Blethen’s Plea for the Seattle Times

Blethen isn’t wrong about the need for regulation, but his idea for a cure to give diminished legacy publications such as his (and specifically locally-owned legacies) special tax and regulatory breaks so they can… do what, slow their decline(?), doesn’t fix the problems.

Review: Illuminating Seattle Opera’s “Thousand Splendid Suns”

A haunting, atmospheric work full of lush evocative music rendered in technicolor orchestrations inflected with Afghanish flourishes.Ā 

If Growth is Essential to Success, What Happens When our Birthrate Declines?

If our markers for success are measured by growth, what happens when our population goes into decline?

In the Age of Information: Still Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman warns that overwhelming us with news (information) divorced from the ability to act on said information degrades our will and ultimately our ability to act on news we can do something about.

All Music Reconsidered: Two Books to Understand a New Era of Listening

The ability to access any style, any era, any genre and remix at will gives audiences unprecedented power over what they hear and consequently more power to influence our contemporary musical culture and what gets made, played, and why.

Which Way Read?

So why do people read? To learn? To amuse? To fill in the cracks of boredom? Probably all of these.

Post Alley’s New “What We’re Reading” Blog

Every Monday afternoon Post Alley writers gather for a newsroom meeting. When the website first started, we'd meet in person, down at Peter Miller Books in Pioneer Square. But...

Seattle Symphony Update: A Cautionary Tale?

Whenever an organization is having problems – as this one clearly is – it's helpful as a reporter to step back to consider how a successful, well-run organization might respond in the situation.

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