EleanorTurney.co.uk

We’ve been having an interesting debate on the @ArtsPro Twitter account today, after the lovely Katie asked a question about whether it’s OK to Tweet at the theatre. Personally, I’m all for sharing experiences and opinions, but not during the show. No offence to anyone, but your opinion is not so important that it can’t wait until the interval/end of the show. By all means tweet about plays, and by all means tweet from inside theatre buildings, but during the actual play, phones off. And that includes iPhones, iPads, blackberries etc, too.

It’s not the noise I object to (although very few phones are silent), it’s the light. Back-lit screens are incredibly distracting when you’re sitting in the dark. So, by all means tell your followers if Jamie parker was fabulous as Prince Hal at the Globe (he was) or if Alan Bennett’s ‘The Habit of Art’ left you cold (it did). But wait until a suitable break. Please.

But, lots of people disagree, including this article, which I commented on when it first appeared (I’m @EllieFace, and I’m a curmudgeon). I reckon designated ‘tweet seats’ would be OK, so long as they were at the back of the stalls, where the audience can’t see. I don’t know how distracting it would be for the actors. What do you think?

“People will pay for it if it is good enough. People will pay if it is original, exclusive, has authority and is relevant to our audiences.” John Hartigan.

I’m not convinced this is true. We’ve been chewing this one over at AP towers quite a lot recently, (www.artsprofessional.co.uk if anyone’s interested – it’s good), and perhaps once a decision has been taken I’ll be at liberty to share the discussion here. However, what came out of today’s meeting is that I really think that print journalism is on the way out. Logically, if you can get something for free – legally – why would you pay for it? While it’s nice to read a paper in bed on a Saturday morning, the chances of me actually forking out £1.50 for it are vanishingly small. Putting aside the fact that I get paid to read the papers for News from the Nationals, I get my news from free sources, and no-one can deny that newspaper circulation is diminishing. Colleagues have variously said that the Guardian is losing £50m or £80m a year (don’t quote me), and its journalists don’t get paid to blog. In my humble opinion, it is the blogs that put the good ole Grauniad above the other broadsheet press. I love the debate and opinions that fly around on the ‘Comment is free’ section and on the blogs – which you just can’t get with a print copy of the paper unless you specifically sit down with other people who have bought and read the same paper. Sharing a link is so easy.

I think the value of newspapers lies in the expertise of the writers, what Hartigan refers to as ‘having authority’. Anyone can blog (um…) but not anyone can be published in the Guardian (or the Times, Telegraph etc). It is this vested authority that makes the content appealing. The point was made that bloggers will never have the authority and gravitas of a paid national journalist. I disagree. The point that you don’t know whether you can trust bloggers because they haven’t been verified by a newspaper, is valid insofar as, as I said, anyone can blog. However, it is only by proving some kind of value that bloggers build up a following. It may take longer to figure out a blogger’s political slant, personal bias, background etc, but perhaps that will just make readers more open-minded. If I come across a journalist because they have written something for the Guardian, I immediately make certain assumptions about them, just as I do when reading someone who writes for the Mail. If I came across Melanie Phillips in cycberspace it might take me a whole nanosecond longer to work out that she’s poison than if I read her in the Mail. While I would still search out validated heavyweights for educated political or financial analysis, if I’m looking for information on something I know a little about already and have enough nous to judge the truth and relevancy of an opinion, the blogosphere is great for less restrained content. Originality, exclusivity and relevancy are not enough to make people pay when they can find all three for free. I acknowledge that it is harder for free content to have authority, but it is by no means impossible. With respected journalists and academics writing for free, the only problem is that it can take a long time to sift thought the rubbish to find the useful content. But then that’s true of certain newspapers, too.

I am now, officially, a real journalist. Oh yes. Having worked for ArtsProfessional for almost exactly six months, I have been writing APe-mail since January. Yes, I am known as The Ape. No comment necessary, my colleagues have made all the jokes. And I mean all. Anyway, APe-mail goes out to about 11,700 people – not all of whom are my friends and family – and gets read by lots of other people in the arts. It’s basically a round up of the fortnight’s arts news, and it’s actually quite useful for people who don’t get paid to read all of the broadsheet press every day (smug smug smug). As of today, due to a well-timed request, I now have a byline. Having been an anonymous Ape for the last few weeks, I am now bylined in all my glory at the end of my overview piece of writing. I am really quite excited, and feel like a proper journalist.

The free tickets scheme for under-26s launches on Monday. My colleague and I are already plotting our assault on the website, and have every intention of getting as many freebies as is humanly possible. I will be blogging on our experiences – how easy/hard it is to actually get hold of tickets, how different theatres are handling the scheme, whether what we see is any good – on the ArtsProfessional website, and as usual, would welcome comments and information on other people’s experiences, too.

I am not filled with hope at the moment, I have to say. Call me a cynic, but there’s just not enough money behind it to give away tickets without damaging theatres’ revenue. I know that makes me hypocritical for using and abusing the system, but it’s free! And I’ve only not been a student for sixth months, and free stuff makes me happy. Very happy. I’ve noticed already, though, that the Young Vic are limiting people to one booking per year (although you can book up to six tickets at a time, provided each ticket goes to a named under-26 who turns up on the night with ID), and The National’s link from the Arts Council’s website doesn’t work and its own website strangely carries no mention of it. The National, the RSC and the Young Vic all already do their own cheap ticket deals (The National’s Travelex tickets are a tenner, and available to anyone, the RSC do £5 tickets for every show on a first-come first-served basis with at least ten available on the day, and the Young Vic offer £5 to Southwark residents and £10 to students and under-26s anyway), and it will be interesting to see whether these have more or fewer takers. I hope that people who try and book a freebie and miss out will be tempted to book for a small fee anyway, but we shall see.

I’m slightly annoyed that I’ve already booked, for real money, almost everything that I want to see at participating theatres in the next few months, but I only have myself to blame. There’s some good stuff coming up at the National, and a free ticket makes the prospect of paying the train fare to London and dashing to catch the last train home again much more appealing. I’m still upset that the only venue in Cambridge that’s participating is The Junction, when everything good seems to be at the Arts Theatre, especially given that the Arts Theatre’s student/young person reductions are pitiful and never seem to apply to anything I want to see. On a tangential note, the worst culprit for student deals that I have come across is the Theatre Royal, Bath, which takes a quid off prices. A whole quid. Unsurprisingly, it is not offering freebies, either.