Interview with Patrice Caron on the future of online arts reporting

This is the second part of the interview I did with Patrice Caron, the editor-in-chief of Bang Bang this morning.

Another topic he discussed in depth was how arts journalism will change in the future, especially with respect to online media.

The concept he put forth corresponds directly to Long Tail economics. he suggested a sort of Wikipedia for the arts.

He talked about the amount of time he spends online, sifting through the abundance of information on up-and-coming musicians.

He says all the information out there is "worth reading", but it comes down to how much time you have.

"That's my job," he said. "But my brother, an accountant, doesn't have that time. he wants to know what the best band to listen to is, but he doesn't want to spend three hours to find out."

He says there needs to be a resource that will link all the information, similar to how Chris Anderson talks about Amazon in the Long Tail article . That's what he sees the changing role of journalists evolving to. As someone to compile all the information, and to comment on it, but to let people sort through it, make the connections and to let them comment on things as well.