UPDATE: This blog post makes clear why Schwartz's project was worth doing. Doesn't change the issues, but worth reading.
I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said something about it being a mark of intelligence if one could hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. I'll try it anyway with the current dustup between the Globe's Geoff Edgers and the Phoenix's Lloyd Schwartz.
What am talking about? Read Globe staffer Edgers' post earlier this week on the Exhibitionist blog, in which he takes to task the Boston Phoenix's Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Schwartz for violating journalistic ethics. The BSO paid Schwartz, also a serious poet, to help some of the Tanglewood fellows set six of his poems to music. He worked with the fellows, stayed overnight and was even reimbursed for his mileage. Understandably, Schwartz found this a pleasant experience and blogged about it. And Edgers gave him a couple of mild smacks for violating the basic journalistic tenet of not doing business with the people you write about.
Edgers also posted Schwartz's lengthy response, in which the critic detailed his arrangements with the BSO, noted that the honorarium involved was "VERY small" (caps his) and grumped about the "personal hostility" of the post. Apparently he doesn't read many blogs, because he clearly has no idea what hostility exists online. And he says this: "None of this would have been public knowledge if I hadn't mentioned it myself. As for my favoring the BSO, I wonder if anyone responding to the blog has bothered to read my reviews of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during the last few months, let alone compared them to what I've written about the BSO in the past 30 years? I've always been honest in my reviews and have always said, sometimes indiscreetly, what I think. Anyone who reads my reviews knows this. And I will continue to say what I think as long as I write."
Perhaps it's too obvious why you're not supposed to take money or favors from the people you write about. And that holds in any milieu, no matter how rareified. Schwartz's rejoinder that he has never pulled his punches and never will, despite this lovely offer from the BSO, can be true and still, well ... In flow-chart form, it's the same explanation forthcoming from every corrupt city councilor who accepts a Lincoln Continental from a city contractor and then swears on his mother's grave that it won't influence his decision on those upcoming bids.
But full disclosure is a bitch. I should stop now and remind you that I write for the Globe sometimes. And Geoff and I are email acquaintances. But I swear my decision to write this post has nothing to do with that.
See?
Schwartz says one shot at an honorarium in 30 years isn't enough to make him go all soft and gushy about the BSO, and that's no doubt true. But we can't have every reporter following the ethical standard Schwartz sets for himself, or else journalism would be collapsing. Oh, wait a minute...
Schwartz also has a point about artists writing some of the best criticism. He names Virgil Thomson, and I think immediately of John Updike. Much good book criticism today, in particular, is by authors. And we'd be losing something of value if people like Thomson and Updike and Schwartz couldn't write criticism because of these sorts of ethical issues arising from their art.
The traditional remedy here would be to tell Schwartz he can't write about the BSO for a while. But that would make it pretty tough for him to do his job, and Phoenix editor Peter Kadzis doesn't sound like he has any problem with the BSO arrangement.
Schwartz and his editor see him as an artist who also writes criticism too; Edgers sees him as a longtime local journalist who ought to know better than to take a check from the BSO, no matter how worthy the project. Contradictory ideas, both valid.
It is bit much when Schwartz says it's "a sad state of affairs" that his arrangement with the BSO might be seen as compromising his standing as a critic. Ditto Kadzis' "narrow minds" crack. It's very right for Edgers to ask the questions. And if the honorarium is "VERY small," why risk the appearance of a conflict by accepting it at all?
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