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Someone please give this reporter a break: Particularly since the departure of chief art critic Blake Gopnik, the Washington Post fine arts blog, Arts Post, has been barely subsisting on museums beat reporting by Jacqueline Trescott. Recently, a few new bylines have been added—-including fashion writer Katherine Boyle, arts aide Erin Williams, and a few freelancers—-but the blog continues to be anemic and chock full of yawny, nuts and bolts reporting like this. If that weren’t Internet-dumb enough, Arts Post is often updated only once a day, and routinely during the traffic-unfriendly afternoon hours. Just another example of the region’s biggest newspaper failing to get with the program. (Very necessary full disclosure: I previously worked in the Post Style section.)
Now, this is how you launch a blog: If the WaPo arts team ain’t gonna do it right, at least the city’s arts institutions are compensating. The Phillips Collection launched The Experiment Station yesterday, a blog that, while only a day old, already comes out swinging with a truckload of content. Thoughtful editorial! Photos! Video! Links, links, links! Take notes, big media.
Yesterday on arts desk: Sadie Dingfelder talked to the rogue wheatpasting duo Inkognito, who tastefully pasted an image of a race car at the site of a deadly car collision in Adams Morgan; I assembled this guide to the ambitious Forward electronic music festival, which continues through Sunday; arts editor Jonathan L. Fischer talked to comic artists who successfully distributed their printed work in D.C. yesterday, unlike Radiohead, who totally sucked at it; and Chris Klimek tells complainers to STFU about Fringe Festival’s price hike, for Christ’s sake.
And finally, for those who give a crap: Katy Perry debuts her new “E.T.” music video tonight on MTV.