Jon and Kate Gosselin, please take your fighting elsewhere.
Defining “art” is a narrow and dangerous endeavour, but it seems that the line between arts and tabloids has become blurred as more and more celebrity gossip splashes its way into the arts and culture section of Canadian newspapers.
Jon and Kate Gosselin’s highly publicized divorce is an entertaining story, but is it really art? The latest Twitter spat between starlet Lindsay Lohan and on-again, off-again girlfriend Samantha Ronson hardly even counts as news. Even Balloon Boy, God help humanity, has managed to float his way over to some arts and culture sections.
Canada has a unique, rich and eventful art scene deserving of all the coverage we can fit into print. Using space to cater to the entertainment value of Hollywood gossip is insulting to both artists and readers.
But like it or not, print journalism is a money-making business and the goal is to sell papers. This means content is selected at least partly based on what the majority of readers find significant and interesting.
And these days, most people are more interested in whether Jon or Kate Gosselin will win custody of their precocious sextuplets than they are in local theatre, literary prizes and federal funding for arts programs.
And it pays to oblige.
In a time of Quebecor Media layoffs, Canwest bankruptcy protection, and CBC cuts, celebrity tabloid magazines are not just surviving, but thriving.
HELLO! Canada, a weekly Hollywood tabloid that gives readers up-to-the-minute" news," fashion and paparazzi photos from the world of celebrity , had the highest increase in circulation of any Canadian magazine last year. In fact, according to a report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, HELLO! Canada was one of the only magazines in the country to enjoy any minor measure of success in 2008. Over two-thirds of the magazines audited for the study reported double-digit percentage losses in subscriptions.
HELLO! Canada’s executive publisher, Tracey McKinley, pondered the magazine’s continuedpopularity in an August interview with the news website Media in Canada.
“Clearly, Canadians are enjoying the unprecedented access to celebrities’ lives that we provide,” McKinley said.
Unprecedented access is exactly what human beings crave. Entertainment experts say the public is drawn to tabloid journalism because we have a natural voyeuristic tendency.
Humans like to peep into other people’s lives and celebrity gawking offers us that chance much more effectively than spying on your neighbours over the backyard fence.
With telephoto zoom camera lenses, flocks of paparazzi climbing over each other for a baby-bump sighting, and celebrity bloggers like Perez Hilton updating 24/7, stalking from a comfortable distance has never been more possible.
Perez Hilton personifies the public’s obsession with gutter press. The internet gossip phenomenon started blogging on his eponymous website in 2005 and is now known as “Hollywood’s most feared gossip.”
An average 14 million people worldwide view his site every day. That’s higher than the number of people who voted in the last Canadian federal election.
Online sites such as Perez Hilton, Pink Is The New Blog, and Lainey Gossip are a major threat to arts journalism, luring readers away from the latest indie music sensation and the international festival of authors with the promise of Suri Cruise and celebrity crotch shots.
But instead of competing with the tabloids by simply matching their content, perhaps newspapers should be offering readers something different. Something more culturally relevant.
Like arts coverage.