Oceans apart in criticism

New York used to be like that. When Toscanini was conducting at the Met and Mahler at the Philharmonic, seven different papers had critics on duty. If a new Gershwin show came on against Cole Porter on Broadway, the world would wait up half the night for the first reviews to hit the street. A bar-line of artists awaiting their notices is a persistent leitmotiv in Damon Runyon's tales, a driving force in Guys 'n' Dolls.

But Manhattan's diversity was subsumed by consolidation. One daily after another was bought out or went under until, in the Sixties, New York, like most American cities, was left with one paper to report the arts.

This monopoly places an unhealthy burden on critics. If theirs is to be the only voice to pronounce on a new show or the fate of an institution, they are obliged to wear a mantle of responsibility that is antithetical to good journalism. A critic is licensed to get it wrong from time to time. Restrict that licence and the reviews grow safe and solemn. An era of incorporation has fostered a pontifical tone in American arts criticism.

Over the same era, America suffered the incorporation of arts institutions. London has five international orchestras, three opera companies, two ballet troupes, three international art galleries, two engines of modern art at Tate and Saatchi, a National Theatre and too many smaller companies to count. New York has one monolith in each art form, two at most.

A British national paper can, if so minded, call for the closure of English National Opera, secure in the knowledge that another paper might take a very different view, if only for the hell of it. The New York Times dare not challenge any arts institution because there is no outlet for any alternative view. If City Opera or the Met were to shut down as the results of an impetuous editorial, the Times would never be forgiven.

Where American arts journalism is shackled by civic responsibility, competition, on our side, fosters friskier reviews and robust views. Even a flop such as ENO's Rhinegold drew one or two favourable notices, precipitating the possibility of debate.

In the US, there is scant opportunity for contradiction. I was asked a while back by the New York Times to submit an article comparing arts coverage in London and New York. After prolonged consideration, over several weeks, the article was rejected by an editor on the grounds that it would be "odd to be criticising ourselves in our own pages".

Odd? I protested. Surely that is what a free press is for. The Evening Standard, along with most British papers, regularly publishes articles that attack our editorial line or take issue with our columnists. That is how democracy is meant to work - but not, perhaps, in a monopoly culture.

Howell Raines, the New York Times editor who was toppled last year when one of his reporters, Jayson Blair, was caught making up stories, has attacked his former paper's loss of "competitive metabolism" - its conviction that "it's not news until we say it's news". He calls this complacency "mañana journalism".

It could never prevail in the British press - which is not to say that all is rosy in our columns. Fierce newspaper competition often provokes a rush to judgment, a sense of perpetual crisis and a frantic chase for stories, sacrificing the process of reflective maturation.

Competition, however, entails the possibility of change. When one British newspaper upgrades its arts pages or dumbs down, the others take note and may follow suit. In the US, without competition, there is no incentive for change. Arts sections have grown duller and dumber as editors plug into celebrity culture. The Washington Post, almost alone among major metros, has maintained a flow of confident criticism.

What The Telegraph and New York Times have in common is that both are undergoing identity crisies - the Telegraph because of the uncertainty of its future ownership and the Times because lack of competition has bred rotten apples and bad journalism. Their vulnerability is hazardous to the arts. Both are vital organs in the world's cultural anatomy.

Whatever else may be pressing on its conscience, the New York Times needs to remember that arts are more than just a magnet for premium-rate advertising. Arts is the section which projects a newspaper's responsiveness to creativity, its sensitivity to the world of ideas, its harmony with reflection, its common language with the most active of its readers.