Please join Critical Minded, the Ford Foundation, and the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation for an online convening on the state of independent arts and culture journalism. We will present learnings from a new report, “Support for Arts and Culture Journalism.” Based on a survey of 141 independent US publications that cover arts and culture, the report explores the impact of recent funding shifts and free-speech pressures. This presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with publishers sharing their experiences and insights on how to keep arts and culture journalism vibrant, relevant, and sustainable. We will also announce the public release of the survey data to encourage further research and insights. Come learn with us about the challenges facing cultural coverage and how we can continue to advocate and build support for it into the future.
Presenter
Dr. Lucy March, Morgan State University
Dr. March is an independent researcher and Postdoctoral Affairs Coordinator at Morgan State University. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in Media and Communication from Temple University in 2024.
Panelists
Tempestt Hazel, Sixty Inches from Center
Tempestt Hazel is a curator, writer, and co-founder of Sixty Inches From Center, a collective of writers, artists, archivists, memory workers and arts workers who publish and produce collaborative projects in the Great Lakes and Great Plains region. Her work with Sixty is rooted in advocacy for the creative health and livelihoods of arts workers, restorative cultural infrastructures, and co-creating regional support networks in the Midwest. She's served as the facilitator for the Chicago Critic’s Table at the University of Chicago (created by Adrienne Brown), a member of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Creating Future Memory convening and legacy council, and an advisory board member of the Archives of American Art Journal. Tempestt is a recipient of the 2025 Rabkin Prize for arts writers and the 2019 J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists for her work in Black legacy preservation and artist archives.
Jameson Johnson, Boston Art Review
Jameson Johnson is a writer, curator, and community organizer based in Boston. She is the founder and executive director at Boston Art Review, an online and print publication founded in 2017 committed to facilitating discourse around contemporary art across New England. Her writing has also appeared in Artsy, Artnet, Upstate Diary, and the Boston Globe among others.
Ken Schneck, Buckeye Flame
Dr. Ken Schneck (he/him) is the editor of The Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s LGBTQ+ newsroom. For this work, he was honored with the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for National LGBTQ+ Journalist of the Year. He is the author of “Seriously, What Am I Doing Here? The Adventures of a Wondering and Wandering Gay Jew” and three LGBTQ+ Ohio history books. Schneck spent 25 years working in higher education, including 10 years as a dean of students and 13 years as a tenured professor of education. He is a graduate of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
Respondents
Kemi Adeyemi, The Black Embodiments Studio
Camille Bacon, Jupiter Magazine
Katherine Lee, Portland Press Herald
Shannon Lee, The Amp
Lisa Snowden, Baltimore Beat
Moderator
Daniel Reid, Getty Foundation
Closing Reflection
Jackie Clay, Mellon Foundation