As with last time, a number of the blogs that Createquity links to have recently changed addresses. This time, it’s mostly philanthropy-oriented sources that are the culprit. Here’s a brief round-up for those who may be unwittingly be missing out on the action:
- The blog of Springboard for the Arts, Springblog, has moved. Here is the new URL and feed.
- The essential Chronicle of Philanthropy recently restructured its entire website and produced a bunch of broken RSS feeds as a result. The new homepage for news is here; it doesn’t seem possible anymore to get all of the story feeds consolidated in one place like before, but here is a site map with (not always up-to-date) feeds for each section. Meanwhile, Give and Take is now located here and you can (re)subscribe at this link.
- Rosetta Thurman’s website has gone through several redesigns recently, and the latest one put her blog on her homepage and caused my Google Reader subscription to become out of date. She is as prolific as ever, and you can read her thoughts by subscribing here. Rosetta also has a new blog at the aforementioned Chronicle of Philanthropy website which I haven’t had a chance to check out yet.
- My link for OnPhilanthropy Stories was leading to some weird search function, so I’ve now changed it to the homepage which has some good, frequent coverage of philanthropy news. You can subscribe here.
And here are some new blogs to check out!
2am Theatre
Quite possibly one of the first instances of a Twitter conversation giving birth to a blog, 2am Theatre is making a lot of noise despite being a relatively new kid on the block. 2am grew out of an actual 2am Twitter conversation among folks of a theatrical bent that many involved found mind-blowing. Not having the patience to read through the entire thing, I’m glad it has partially migrated to blog format, where a recent screed by Trisha Mead on ticket pricing has been one of the more buzzworthy contributions of late.
Brands Plus Music
Brands Plus Music is a music industry blog primarily authored these days by Suzanne Lainson. Lainson’s posts are often long and fairly infrequent, but they are always incredibly detailed and reveal a researcher’s mind at work. Recent highlights include a helpful heuristic for describing DIY music business models, a treatise on the ramifications of hypercompetition, and an epic two–part examination of the 10,000-hours-to-success concept popularized by Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers.
FutureBlog
The Future of Music Coalition is one of the few organizations out there to focus specifically on the intersection between the arts and federal law. In recent years, FMC has focused like a laser on such hot-button issues as copyright, licensing of the open airwaves, and net neutrality as they relate to musicians’ lives. It’s great to have an arts organization that looks at how government interacts with our field in ways beyond the NEA’s budget, and a great way to stay up to date with the latest developments is to follow FutureBlog.
State of the Art
I’m tickled to welcome James Undercofler, who used to serve as the President of the American Music Center’s Board of Directors back when I was working there, to the blogosphere. Jim is now a professor in Drexel University’s arts management program, and his blog (a recent addition to Douglas McLennan’s ArtsJournal empire) covers a single, very specific topic: the problems with the 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal form and potential alternatives. Unlike many of us who like to complain about the burdens that the nonprofit form places on very small and/or informal organizations, Jim is coming at this from the perspective of having led several large institutions, where he claims the nonprofit form is equally problematic, particularly from the standpoint of governance. In a recent two-part series, he argues for dramatically reducing the size of most boards and instituting a standardized certification process for the ones that remain.