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Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class

Scott Timberg

3.62 · Rating details · 272 ratings · 55 reviews

When artists and artisans can’t make a living, the health of America’s culture is at risk

Change is no stranger to us in the twenty-first century. We must constantly adjust to an evolving world, to transformation and innovation. But for many thousands of creative artists, a torrent of recent changes has made it all but impossible to earn a living. A persistent economic rec ...more

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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published January 13th 2015 by Yale University Press

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Mar 12, 2015 Janet rated it it was amazing

This book should have a giant alarm clock on the cover. It is time for the creative class--and the middle class--to WAKE UP and notice what is happening. Not just to mourn the loss of creative jobs (as opposed to 'opportunities for exposure' i.e. working for free) but to realize that the whole middle class is disappearing down the drain, and think about why. The book makes (again and again) the interesting point of the link between the fate of the middle class as a whole and the fate of the 'cre This book should have a giant alarm clock on the cover. It is time for the creative class--and the middle class--to WAKE UP and notice what is happening. Not just to mourn the loss of creative jobs (as opposed to 'opportunities for exposure' i.e. working for free) but to realize that the whole middle class is disappearing down the drain, and think about why. The book makes (again and again) the interesting point of the link between the fate of the middle class as a whole and the fate of the 'creative class'. A terrifying, depressing, important and stirring vision of what is happening to this country's soul as well as its economic well-being.

Scott Timberg was a hardworking LA Times reporter who got caught up in a tidal wave of layoffs in 2008, part of a larger gutting of American journalism in the years between 2008 and 2012 which saw a cut of 3/4 of reporting jobs. (Anybody want to imagine what that means for an informed democracy?) He began to examine the phenomenon of the implosion of jobs in cultural fields across the board--from the death of the recording industry to the closure of newspapers to the reporting on the arts, not only the drying-up of paid work for the cultural producer--the writer, the reporter, the musician, the actor-- but also all the people who support that work--the video store clerk, the bookstore employee, and all the knowledge workers and skilled laborers who put books and music and films into our hands, the printers and drivers and distributors.

The issue has more doors than an Advent calendar. But the main thrust of his argument is that the collapse of the creative class IS the collapse of the middle class. I was lucky enough to talk to him about the book--as these are issues that are always on my mind. I think the collapse of the music industry was the canary in the coal mine. It's where we saw the gutting of real work beginning, the failure of people accustomed to producing something, i.e. cultural workers, to become futurologists and properly interpret a whole new world coming at them like a freight train and respond quickly and accurately. Of course, they did not.

We talked about the collapse of newspapers and the replacement of print with the internet were actually two separate phenomena. We talked about the 'culture of free,' and who is making the money-- questioning the whole ideology of 'free.' We talked about the quality of culture itself in this era of marketplace dominance/blockbuster worship/celebrity culture. We're in our own soup pot here--not everywhere in the world is this happening, it's America going down the tubes. Other people still have culture, while we've got the thinning out of the herd of winner-takes-all. What is all this doing to the soul of the Americans?

Who is making the money? Not the artists, that's for sure. Not the knowledge workers in publishing houses, record labels, etc. It takes a good look at who is making the money when everyone is working for free--it's the distributor of the producer's work. This idea of something for nothing--of a generation raised to believe that anything digital, because of its ephemerality and ease of transfer, is a free commodity. And with the draining of payment away from the producer in these industries--people blogging instead of working for publishers and newspapers and magazines--as I am reviewing books right here, for free. Musicians releasing their music on YouTube and Soundcloud instead of record labels selling product through actual stores. Who is making the money in this world of Amazon and Spotify and Netflix and Pandora and the Huffington Post?

This book is already igniting a thousand really important conversations about our society, and what is the nature the world we're living in right now. Timberg's book that should be on everyone's shelf, because it will help us understand what happened to the middle class, as well as the creative class whose fate is intricately tied to it. ...more

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Jan 25, 2015 Trent Hill rated it it was amazing

This is a wonderful book that addresses a troubling side effect of the Internet-driven economy: the hollowing out of the complex economic structures, be they in music, film, or literature, that allowed artists and would-be artists to sustain (or at least imagine) actual careers creating art.

In a series of case studies, Timberg argues that commercial entities like bookstores, video stores, and record shops, as well as newspapers and magazines who provided arts coverage, weren’t just generic midd This is a wonderful book that addresses a troubling side effect of the Internet-driven economy: the hollowing out of the complex economic structures, be they in music, film, or literature, that allowed artists and would-be artists to sustain (or at least imagine) actual careers creating art.

In a series of case studies, Timberg argues that commercial entities like bookstores, video stores, and record shops, as well as newspapers and magazines who provided arts coverage, weren’t just generic middlemen but institutions intimately tied up in the artistic genres in which they traded. They not only “added value” by actively marketing creative products, but they were social institutions as well, bringing connoisseurs and consumers together. More importantly for Timberg’s argument, these old-school mediators provided the economic structures and means that allowed prospective artists to build careers in the arts independently of support from academe or rich patrons. The poster child for this kind of career path is Quinton Tarrantino, who got his education as a filmmaker from working at a video store. He was able to support himself, however parlously, while working and schooling himself in his chosen field, in much the same way that an aspiring novelist could, pre-internet, support herself as an essayist and reviewer while working her way up the publication ladder. It was possible, that is, for an aspiring artist to have a solidly middle-class life without relying on a trust fund, indulgent parents, or family connections.

But just as important are the would-be Tarrantinos, Patti Smiths, or Salman Rushdies who don’t wind up “making it” as artists. (Or, for that matter, the connoisseur / curmudgeons like the clerks in Hornby’s High Fidelity, whose artistic and aspirations seem to begin and end with their record story.) In the “old” system, they could still build middle-class careers in the arts, as promoters, A & R people, and reviewers. In the new, post-Internet economic and artistic universe, the options are much more limited, and would-be artists face something more akin to an existential crap shoot: create your art, give it away (or sell it as “content” for pennies), and pray it goes viral before you starve. If you don’t win, well, good luck with your barista gig.

To draw a perhaps flawed analogy, the economic ecosystem of the previous regime, rooted in the economic structures of 19th and 20th-century capitalism with its rich variety of middlemen in the systems of production, distribution, and dissemination, was something like an old-growth forest, one that supported a wide range of flora and fauna growing in the shade of the tall trees (which weren't all of the same species). The new Internet economy in the arts is more like the tree farm planted after the old forest has been clearcut, full of GMO pines with some incidental scrub growth, with the main beneficiaries being the company that owns the (server) farm. And while Timberg doesn’t spend much if any time drawing out the implications, in many ways the contemporary arts economy he anatomizes is itself a case study for the dark side of the New Economy: there’s a lot of money being made, but most of it is going to the folks who own and run the server farms, and if you aren’t a “maker” / coder, your job prospects, at least if you aren't in one of the surviving traditional professions, aren’t looking too great. Timberg forces us to ask the question: Do we want our arts and letters to be the products of "the best and the brightest," or just the best and the brightest of an inherited aristocracy?

It's not a perfect book. The final chapter, which tries to link the culture crash to postmodern and post-structural trends in academic literary and cultural theory, is a pretty exhausted decline-and-fall trope that's only marginally more convincing here than in a warhorse like Generation X Goes to College. At least with Culture Crash there's some correlation between the death of arts and literary reviewing in newspapers and sites like Goodreads. (Given Timberg's background, as an arts reporter and reviewer, I understand the sensitivity.) My outsider's sense is that the real culprit in the collapse of newspaper publishing in general is Craigslist, which pretty much did in newspaper classifieds, along with the movement of readers and advertising to the internet. That said, Timberg nails it with the economically-oriented case studies that make up the better part of the book. ...more

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Mar 18, 2015 Brian rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, nonfiction, reading-unicorn-club, north-america, society-and-culture, art, architecture

This book is a bit hard for me to review, because part of it seems like cogent, important analysis of the state of the arts world and part of it is Old Man Yells at Cloud. Also, the two parts are hopelessly mixed up among each other, so getting value out of Culture Crash requires wading through the occasion random digression about graphic arts in the middle of the architecture section or complaint about postmodernism.

The major point is that globalization destroys the creation of culture as a su ...more

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Nov 09, 2020 Steve Erickson rated it liked it

CULTURE CRASH gets so much right that its lapses are all the more disappointing. Timberg's early chapters do a great job of analyzing the difficulty of making a living as a journalist, musician or architect in the 21st century, tracing this to the fact that the Internet cheapened these trades and the 2008 recession. But his idea of valuable culture is a very specific one, formed by indie rock and classical music. Timberg celebrates the record store clerk as an alternative to the corporate algori ...more

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Feb 22, 2017 Jon rated it it was amazing

Timberg's basic point is that the contemporary society is killing off middle-brow culture--the creative class--and in the process is destroying the very thing that makes society flourish. His idea of the creative class is related to Richard Florida's. Florida's book, which I haven't read but I've read about, argues that the creative class is key to the success of a city. For him, "creative class" means essentially anyone who creates--this includes then not just artists, musicians, and writers bu ...more

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Feb 04, 2015 Bruce rated it really liked it

Culture Crash turns out to be much more than a polemic, although it is not quite a complete manifesto. Scott Timberg is motivated by, yet manages to transcend, the considerable personal pain of a journalist who lost his job and then his house as a consequence of the kinds of changes he analyzes in this book. His research is extensive, as evidenced in both the main text and the excellent bibliographic essay. Timberg dedicates individual chapters to specific fields such as architecture, independen ...more

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Apr 09, 2015 Anne Marie rated it liked it

The book is a mix of insightful observations and (as a fellow book club member pointed out) "old man yells at cloud." At times, the book lacks structure. His opinions and his definition of what art and culture is makes the author seems out of touch. Ironically, never actually directly defines what creative work is exactly, and the reader will just eventually figure it out after reading through the entire book.

However, it was an interesting read, and was great fodder for our book club. ...more

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Feb 14, 2015 Scott rated it really liked it

James Lanier, who has been skeptical about the great freeing benefits of the Internet economy, sees the reporting on the new paradigm driven by unlikely Horatio Alger stories. 'There are a few success stories,' he said, 'that create a false sense of hope.' Because Radiohead can offer its record free of charge, he argued, doesn't mean that bands below the superstar level can. Similarly, the death of Apple visionary Steve Jobs uncorked various rants about the value of mavericks and how you can ge

...more

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Apr 20, 2016 Todd N rated it really liked it

Is it a bad thing that sneering record store clerks across the land have been replaced by basket analysis algorithms on e-commerce sites that helpfully announce "people who bought this also bought that"? Probably it isn't, though I should admit that I was a once sneering record store clerk myself.

In this book we learn that even though life is no picnic for STEM jobs, it's way crappier for people in the creative fields like architects, writers for free weeklies, musicians, buggy whip manufacturer Is it a bad thing that sneering record store clerks across the land have been replaced by basket analysis algorithms on e-commerce sites that helpfully announce "people who bought this also bought that"? Probably it isn't, though I should admit that I was a once sneering record store clerk myself.

In this book we learn that even though life is no picnic for STEM jobs, it's way crappier for people in the creative fields like architects, writers for free weeklies, musicians, buggy whip manufacturers, indie film makers, papyrus makers, and of course the whiniest and most out-of-breath canaries in the entire coal mine: newspaper reporters.

Part of me doesn't mind the thought of the next Arthur Crudup making as much as the next Elvis for the next That's All Right. But then again I don't like a world in which the woman behind Cat Power declares bankruptcy.

If block chords and breathy vocals can't secure a decent living then what's the point of life, really? Surely not to color in adult coloring books while listening to lifehack podcasts, which is about all that will be left in bookstores and on your iPods in a few years at this rate.

I made a decision to separate career from creative endeavors around 25 years ago, with the result that I'm not particularly good at either one. I'm a failed fauxhemian.

But I wonder about my children and what their paths will be like. What if my daughter wants to stamp out block chords on the piano? And what if my son is the next David Lowery, which would make me almost as proud as if he were the next John Von Neumann? Will they make 17 dollars a month from some streaming service while some ex-swim-team VP bro monetizes the crap out of my kids in the name of disruption? My kids should be the only ones profiting from my bad parenting.

If I’m reading this book right, our only hope is to elect Trump this November, which virtually guarantees a vibrant art scene and underground press for at least the next two decades. (Think Margaret Thatcher.) Forget your symphony subscriptions and NPR donations. This is the only feasible way to save the arts.

I'm reluctantly recommending this book (without the benefit of an algorithm no less) with the caveat that I found it a bit repetitive despite the valid and important points it made. It’s organized by occupation, so just read the introduction and the ones that you are interested in.
...more

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Jun 23, 2015 Oliver Brackenbury rated it it was amazing

This arrived in my reading queue at the same time as my first novel was released. Fearing a healthy injection of liquid doom at precisely the wrong time, I put it aside for a couple of days. Opening it with trepidation, I was almost immediately put at ease by the opening chapter - which was not the recitation of Sad Facts & Numbers as I'd expected it to be.

Scott Timburg wisely opens with a description of not only when things worked better for the creative class in recent times, but HOW they work This arrived in my reading queue at the same time as my first novel was released. Fearing a healthy injection of liquid doom at precisely the wrong time, I put it aside for a couple of days. Opening it with trepidation, I was almost immediately put at ease by the opening chapter - which was not the recitation of Sad Facts & Numbers as I'd expected it to be.

Scott Timburg wisely opens with a description of not only when things worked better for the creative class in recent times, but HOW they worked. Right away, you get a blueprint that could be learned from so as to improve the current situation. If only more non-fiction books on disquieting subjects could do something like this!

The rest of the book manages to stay relatively upbeat even when outlining the wounds, some self-inflicted, on the body of the creative class. This is important, because a misery parade is more easily disregarded and there's much of value here that shouldn't be ignored. Along with the look at better times, rose-tinted glasses not being in Timberg's toolkit, and the appraisal of How Things Are Now & How We Got Here...there is a third element I'd love to see brought more attention - the firm and fair argument for what was once referred to as 'middlebrow' entertainment.

It's hard to get too into that without just transcribing the book, but the gist of it is that just as society was healthier when the middle class was healthy, so too was its culture healthier when there wasn't such a wasteland between the celebrity magazines etc of low culture and the self-sabotaging gated communities of incomprehensible academic high culture.

It's also yet another book I've read this year which references Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future?", further reinforcing my belief that anyone who wishes to understand how we currently live should read that.

Meanwhile, EVERYONE should read this damn thing, especially non-artists and ESPECIALLY anyone who has ever felt like they don't "get" art or that those who produce it don't practice a profession so much as they play around. It truly has something of value for everyone, much as art & culture does in general. Culture Crash is easily my favorite non-fiction book of the year so far. ...more

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Mar 14, 2018 Russell Lay rated it liked it · review of another edition

Timberg commences his journey by, as William Buckley once said, 'standing athwart history yelling 'Stop'".

Timberg is one of many in the so-called creative class who apparently lost his job in the Great Recession, and apparently, he believes the closing of music stores, the reduction of journalists (or what he considers to be 'true' journalists), the fact critics of music, cinema and books 'sold out' and embraced pop culture (Taylor Swift vs. some unknown guy all the critics used to rave about, b ...more

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Jan 01, 2016 Sandra Ross rated it it was amazing

Well-written and substantive look at how the creative class (writers, musicians, artists, etc.) in the U.S. has been crushed by a convergence of forces over the last twenty years that escalated into a fast freefall in the 21st century and is now on the verge of disappearing altogether leaving the hacks and wannabes to take over and produce garbage that has no resemblance to anything truly creative and truly relevant.

It's a sobering book. I knew a lot of what the author talked about already, but ...more

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Feb 09, 2016 Zach Finkelstein rated it really liked it

Another angle on inequality: the hollowing out of the middle class and it's effect on the culture industry. The loss of middlebrow culture - Leonard Bernstein on the cover of Time Magazine, record store clerks and independent bookstores as footsoldiers of taste- in the internet age and the rise of the winner-take-all - Adele selling 60% of all albums in 2015. It's not a data-driven book. It's a powerful (anecdotal) counterargument to the technocracy and that big data is the answer for everything ...more

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May 13, 2015 Ian rated it it was amazing

Like music, magazines, non-blockbuster movies, books, newspapers? Wondering why they're all disappearing with alarming speed? Read the morbid story of how technology and structural economic changes are emptying out the middle class and taking with it many of the creative professions with it.

Highly recommended. ...more

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Mar 09, 2016 Caelyn rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, readup

Reads well and makes an important case for seeing the arts as a public good and a middle class economic issue. Minus one star for the winky winky cultural references, which I can see as unavoidable for this book but still give me unpleasant undergrad flashbacks.

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Apr 22, 2015 Sal rated it really liked it

YouTube has the platform to take us back in time, so let’s reverse our lives nearly 27 years and revisit 1988. We’re standing on an airport tarmac in Salt Lake City on an October day that is gorgeously sunny. Low brown mountains fill parts of the landscape as the private airplane named “Hystouria #1” warms up for a flight to Portland, Oregon. At times during the amateurishly shot video its propellers spin madly and the engine screams at a fevered pitch.

As the young and famous rock band waits pat ...more

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Jul 20, 2020 Zachary Owen rated it really liked it

Scott Timberg's (RIP) Culture Crash is a dense grab bag of ideas, including political theory and concepts which may have gone over my head. I do, however, find that the general premise that the infrastructure for creative people is crumbling to be true. Timberg has plenty of hard numbers and examples to back up his case.

Americans have an illusion that artists are successful because most of the ones we see in the press are megastars. But the truth is most artists, whether they be writers, musicia ...more

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Dec 19, 2019 Jaksone Wallbank rated it liked it

This sort of stuff fascinates me. I like to analyze potential problems and Scott Timberg lays a great foundation for doing that. Throughout the book he outlines the things that he has observed as a journalist and the way he perceives it going. I think that the book is affected by his perspective, his reporter side comes out a lot and that means it does take a while to get into, but once he starts rolling it's fine. Unfortunately he doesn't really start rolling until two-thirds of the way through ...more

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Apr 19, 2015 Marks54 rated it liked it

This is a journalistic account of the decline of the culture business - defined rather broadly to include a number of cultural areas (music, fine arts, dance, architecture, theater) and the broader supporting infrastructure that has in the past supported them. The key claim is that the culture sector, while never thriving, has declined sharply since the turn of the millenium and even more sharply since the financial crisis of 2008, and has yet to even begin much of a recovery. The culprits inclu This is a journalistic account of the decline of the culture business - defined rather broadly to include a number of cultural areas (music, fine arts, dance, architecture, theater) and the broader supporting infrastructure that has in the past supported them. The key claim is that the culture sector, while never thriving, has declined sharply since the turn of the millenium and even more sharply since the financial crisis of 2008, and has yet to even begin much of a recovery. The culprits include the internet, the development of a "winner take all" approach to markets, sharp reductions in government and corporate funding for the arts, and a fair number of self-inflicted wounds that have taught the public to question claims for the continuing value of cultural activities and cultural sponsorship. Mr. Timberg clearly sees these developments as bod things.

The book is informative, well written, and even passionate in places. I purchased this book with the intention of sending it to a niece who is considering going to an expensive college to pursue a course of study in the arts. While I do not wish to be negative about such a course of study, I wanted to provide her with something to think about. I may or may not follow through on this, although if I do not, it will not be because of the book.

So why didn't I rate the book more highly? To start with, there is not much new here in terms of the general arguments. The details have been updated, but the difficult conditions facing those wishing to start out in the arts these days have been clear for quite a while. Timberg adds some interesting nuance, such as in his discussion of the architechture profession or in his discussion of post-modernist criticism and cultural studies. Having said that, the industry dynamics he reports upon are exactly what one would expect to happen given technological changes that promote "disintermediation" and the trauma that the financial crisis inflicted on the broader economy. I am unclear what is new here, although the author has brought a lot together within a single volume in an accessible form.

A related issue is that I am unsure how troubled I am by these developments. Sure, capitalism is a pain, but it has always been hard to make it in cultural professions, including academia. Still, if one is a consumer of cultural products why should you be unhappy? There is lots of high quality new music around that regularly comes through even medium sized markets at reasonable prices. Sure, the established bands making retirement tours charge a lot, but since when it is required to pay? Seriously, many who go watch the Stones are paying in part for the possibility that they will see their last concert. That actually happened to me once in Nashville with a different older performer. Yes, Amazon is a powerful industry leader, but I have never been able to get a wider range of books more conveniently and more cheaply. Is it really that bad? Yes, print is suffering but I don't have to read the WSJ if I don't want to.

I will grant that some people are getting a raw deal here. If you have made your career commitments to work in a business and then later, after you have committed, the conditions change that make life untenable, you are stuck and will take a loss. That is a real problem. What is less of a problem is that people are not required to enter a business or sector in such a state. One is not required to take a vow of poverty to pursue one's dream. Even in religious order in the good old days, such vows were less common than generally thought. If one sets out to take their chances in the music business, for example, then one had better be very good, since talent may not be sufficient and luck/connections are hit-or-miss by definition. If it doesn't work out, who is to blame.

I am less sympathetic with Mr. Timberg's remorse over those who support cultural players but are not themselves players. I have known people in these positions and have spent time there myself. Being a clerk is not that interesting of a job and it is difficult to see where such positions lead apart from exceptions. So you get to be a store manager? OK, then what?

One of my biggest difficulties with the argument is that Mr. Timberg slips in that there is a type of person who will trade off on money to pursue their passion in the arts. I don't buy this for a second as a real social phenomenon, apart from self-delusion. Where is it written in stone that one cannot also take steps to secure one's livelihood in the world while pursuing one's interest in the arts. In the short-term, there may well be frustration, but not being able to pay bills is also frustrating.

Finally, there is the question of whether there should be a national mass/middle class cultural sector. that is as big as it was. If the dissolution of industry structures due to digitization is affecting cultural businesses, as it has with most every other business, why is it bad to make use of it? I can get more movies now than I could ever get at either Blockbuster or Netflix. The same is true for books and music. I cannot browse as frequently at bookstores, but library book groups are thriving. ... and while the content of mass culture may still have some issues, lots of good books are being writtren and lots of good music is being recorded and performed. If the participants in these souped up winner take all markets are really high quality and dynamic, what is so bad about that? Remember, it has always been hellishly difficult to make a living from cultural pursuits. Perhaps the boom times of the post-WWII era were more of an anomaly?

...more

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Jan 25, 2020 Deborah rated it it was amazing

This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the direction of our country, or the world, for that matter. The writer is awesome. The writer is also gone to the world, an untimely passing after offering us this incredible insight into our world. Timberg wrote this book with an empassioned voice and deep understanding of our culture and our people. I wish he was here to help us through what has happened in the five years since this publication. His insight would most likely be dark, but one ...more

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Jul 28, 2019 Matthew rated it liked it

It was well-researched, a reason why I chose to rate it as high as I did. But VERY formulaic, so much so it could easily put a person to sleep.

The basic structure goes like this...

The author writes about the origins of a creative sector. How it rose & thrived. The challenges it faced & how they were overcome. & then the current challenges it faces as well as how it was effected in the economic crash of late 2008.

That's all well & good but the author never tries to address people are trying to fi ...more

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Mar 08, 2020 Amanda rated it liked it

Easy read, paints a compelling picture of how "middle-brow" art and the attendant post-war culture boom in the US dried up after going strong for about a half-century.

The best point he makes is that the bohemian and the bourgeoisie essentially inhabit the same socioeconomic class and have the same aspirations and goals.

Bit of a bummer, frankly; it's been 5 years since he wrote it, and all the problems identified are just getting worse. ...more

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May 27, 2018 Robert Alger rated it really liked it

Timberg is an engaging writer and clearly is well-versed in American culture across a broad timeline. The ideas presented in the book are food for thought for everyone in an increasingly globalized, monetized, and commercialized world. As one review on the back cover notes, the book is not a data-rich analysis, but rather a compelling narrative of the middle-class creatives in America.

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Aug 16, 2018 Holly Wrench rated it it was amazing

This feels like one of the most important and meaningful books I’ve read in a long time and has given me soooo much food for thought. It covers all aspects of the arts, music, poetry, literature, painting, and comments on trends in journalism, the consumer culture, political agendas etc. Would 100% recommend it to anyone and everyone.

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Aug 23, 2019 Lyddie rated it liked it

As much as I enjoyed Culture Crash, and agreed with a significant portion of Timberg's argument, I didn't completely connect with the examples he used to illustrate his points. The first couple of chapters seem disjointed from the rest of the book, in my opinion, but overall it was a solid, impassioned read. ...more

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Dec 07, 2017 Ben Serviss rated it really liked it

Want to be even more depressed about modern times? Still, the points raised here about the benefits of a vibrant culture and creative class are very good, and in exchange for feeling even more terrible about the world, you get a clearer idea of how we got here and how we could possible fix it.

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Aug 29, 2019 Linette rated it liked it

Some good things to say but got bogged down in the middle by his own cleverness.

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Jan 16, 2020 Sarah rated it really liked it

Informative, scathing, depressing. But a worthy read if you want to understand how US culture got so narrow and shallow. Mental Health Warning: the author killed himself.

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Aug 08, 2020 Ietrio rated it did not like it

Shelves: junk

A rather unremarkable nobody decrying the good old days when "the Creatives" were ordained after a couple of years of hazing by a bureaucrat appointed by the king. ...more

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Apr 20, 2015 Alicia rated it really liked it

Shelves: adult, historical, nonfiction

An informative look at the creative world that has been pushed aside, marginalized, recreated and molded (and essentially lost for now) because of the boom in the use of the internet as a replacement platform rather than another avenue, plus the death of jobs and people like music stores/movie rentals/store clerks, critics, libraries/librarians, and that ilk that spread culture.

There is ample evidence that Timberg is well-researched not only in his narrative for each chapter, but his biographic An informative look at the creative world that has been pushed aside, marginalized, recreated and molded (and essentially lost for now) because of the boom in the use of the internet as a replacement platform rather than another avenue, plus the death of jobs and people like music stores/movie rentals/store clerks, critics, libraries/librarians, and that ilk that spread culture.

There is ample evidence that Timberg is well-researched not only in his narrative for each chapter, but his biographical essay and index in the back. As a curator of culture himself, he knows that much has been lost in his profession because of the move away from print, the shifts in thought, people's unwillingness to defend what they once believed in, and more.

I found myself thoughtfully reflecting on certain sections and bookmarking many to revisit and ponder over. There are plenty titles (movie, book, articles, artwork, music) that are name dropped as examples and demonstrations of his point (which is strong but not heavy-handed) that lend more credence to his viewpoint. It definitely gives me pause as a child of the 80s and early 90s and as one of the last groups that know print as it was as I straddle the digital age.

"When Google is used as an excuse to fire the librarian, or "free" access to information causes circulation to drop and newspapers to lay off staff, the culture pays a very real price."

"One of the roles these places fill is that of the 'third place.' The term was coined by the urban theorist Ray Oldenburg, who refers to information spots for gathering that are neither home nor work, but in their way as crucial to our well-being. 'Third places exist on neutral ground and serve the to level their guests to a condition of social equality."

"The original dream of the Internet promised a rich diversity of voices—the mainstream media’s monopoly, despised by left and right alike, would be shattered. But as Michael Wolff has documented in Wired, “The top 10 Web sites accounted for 31 percent of U.S. pageviews in 2001, 40 percent in 2006, and about 75 percent in 2010.” These days, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook garner two-thirds of online ad revenue. As digital outlets proliferate into the space opened up by the closing of newspapers, some kinds of news have thrived, especially specialty sites dedicated to porn, political extremism, paparazzi-style celebrity coverage, and conspiracy theory."

"According to statistics from the Newspaper Association of America, a print reader is worth an average of about $539 in advertising alone, while an average online reader is worth $26. The money saved on printing and distribution doesn’t come close to covering the difference.
Logically, then, the dumbest move for newspapers would have been to convince their readers to abandon the print edition in favor of their Web site, where they’re worth between a tenth and a twentieth as much. Yet this is exactly what most of them have done. They’ve poured resources into free sites full of extra blogs, video reporting, and data-driven presentations. By improving their online offerings—and often raising the price of the print edition to fund them—newspapers essentially encouraged readers to stop buying physical copies."

"But a funny thing happened as the new schools of criticism, with their political energy, youthful vigor, and interest in the popular, came to American universities: students stopped caring. In the 1970s—not a decade known for pragmatism or narrow-minded acquisitiveness—the percentage of students studying English and the humanities, which had been rising for two decades, plummeted."

"My quarter century as a cultural journalist has given me a wide window into the lives of creative people, one that’s allowed me to peer beyond the myths and legends. In some cases I’ve merely met a painter or film director for an hour or two; in other cases, I’ve struck up long-term friendships with indie rockers or lyric poets. What I’ve found is that despite romantic myth, most artists and others who work in the world of culture come from the middle class and hope, after a few years of scrambling and bare-bones living, to return to it. This doesn’t mean giving up their tastes or artistic dedication or even, in some cases, political commitment. But mostly, they want safety and stability, and the ability to keep working. Despite a sense that artistic work and the work ethic are in tension, the creative class defines itself by its labor."

"There’s another middle that should be restored for a healthy culture: cultural middlemen. Bookstore workers, newspaper arts critics, radio deejays, librarians, and so on are crucial to keeping culture circulating; most of them are responsible for connecting the creative arts to a non-specialist audience. Their role is often overlooked, or demonized as “elitist” by techno-utopians. “But gatekeepers are also barriers against the complete commercialization of ideas,” George Packer wrote, “allowing new talent the time to develop and learn to tell difficult truths.” ...more

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About Scott Timberg

Scott Timberg

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LA-based arts/ culture writer; author of CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class. Timberg's stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and he was an LA Times staff writer for six years. ...more