Why We Cover The Bad News In Theatre

Greg Ehrhardt, OnStage Blog Editorial Staff

This was originally published in the OnStage Blog newsletter on August 25th, 2023, with some updates. If you want to be the first to receive these exclusive commentaries and all newly published stories in your inbox, subscribe here.

We sometimes forget that we always add new audiences to our blog and our newsletters, which is why we are sometimes surprised by readers’ reactions when we publish stories of people in positions of power in the community and Broadway theatre behaving badly.

Longtime readers know this is what we do, but it is understandable for new readers who may have started reading our blog due to other types of fun content we produce that they send us the following feedback (paraphrased):

“Stop making the theatre industry look bad.”

“These stories only give ammunition to right-wingers who want to defund the arts.”

“Why don’t you publish the good stories about theatre?”

Let’s address each of those arguments.

1) “Stop making the theatre industry look bad.”

We don’t make the theatre industry look bad; theatre does a great job doing that alone. We just put a spotlight on it.

Why do we put a spotlight on it?

One word: accountability.

Institutions without accountability will continue to do bad things. Blogs and journalists covering any industry have every responsibility to cover every misdeed that happens to hold those people in power accountable so they can make things right.

George Orwell was quoted as saying:

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want published. Everything else is PR”.

We could not agree more.

I’ll say this bluntly: the problem with news media in all industries is they are too invested in having good relationships with the industry they cover.

To put it even more bluntly, PR is easier than journalism, and too many websites want to do things the easy way.

That’s not us. That will never be us.

Change happens when news is printed someone doesn’t want out there. Even if we’re the only blog that prints news that makes theatre bigwigs uncomfortable, and that isn’t enough to make change, we’ll sleep well at night knowing we did what we could.

I don’t know that other publications can make the same statement.

2) “These stories only give ammunition to right-wingers who want to defund the arts.”

Sorry, they would still be doing that if we never existed. We didn’t invent people who hate the arts. We want the arts to do better.

3) “Why don’t you publish the good stories about theatre?”

We admit this has some merit; we will aim to do better at it. Broadway does not need more attention on their press releases; plenty of outlets are already doing that. But, we will spotlight community theatres that do really good things for their communities or try something different (and good) with their production. Those stories need amplification, too, and we will work better to deliver that.

We have a piece just published about a Shakespeare play that did something very unconventional with their casting to great effect, and we did an entire series in September spotlighting great moments in minority representation in theatre and entertainment. These are the types of stories we want to publish more of. If you have a story you think deserves the Onstage Blog spotlight, email us onstageblog@gmail.com.

We’ll end on this note; we’re pretty certain Scott Rudin had people in his camp try to deceptively find out our sources on our reporting about Amar Ramasar and West Side Story. That’s the biggest compliment we have ever received, and our goal is to get more compliments like that.

Your readership helps make that happen, so thank you for your support throughout the years and into the future.