Douglas McLennan

Doug is a longtime arts journalist, and the founder and editor of ArtsJournal.com, he's frequent keynoter on arts and digital issues, and works with a number of arts organizations nationally.

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. 

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.

Seattle Symphony Debacle: Inside the Sudden Departure of Thomas Dausgaard

Yes, music directors quit all the time, but virtually never in the middle of a season and, in the modern era, not effective immediately.

Some of Post Alley’s Top Stories of 2021

With 721 stories this year, Post Alley has explored local, national and international issues.

Risking Hanford (Like We Needed One More Thing to Worry About)

It’s difficult to plumb the true depths of the hazards at Hanford. John Brodeur, an environmental engineer and geologist who worked at Hanford in the 1990s, wrote that the DOE’s leak-detection method is “not only flawed, but designed to avoid finding leaks.”

Latest