The New York Times sells out artists: Shallow data paints a too-rosy picture of “thriving” creative class in the digital age| Salon

A must read from Scott Timberg at Salon.

Musicians, writers, and other creative folk are still scratching their heads over the cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine: “The New Making It” — packaged online as “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t” — looked at how the Internet economy, instead of destroying creative careers, had redrawn them in “complicated and unexpected ways.” The story’s author, Steven Johnson, is an engaging writer, and the piece is told largely through statistics, which most readers assume to be beyond criticism. So why are so many people who work in the world of culture wondering why the article seemed to describe a best-of-all-worlds planet very different from the one they live on?

READ THE FULL STORY AT SALON:
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/24/the_new_york_times_sells_out_artists_shallow_data_paints_a_too_rosy_picture_of_thriving_creative_class_in_the_digital_age/