OnStage Blog Picking Up Dropped NYT #MeToo Broadway Story

Honestly? I admire the effort, but OnStage doesn't have the same clout (or quality reporting) as the New York Times and I don't have faith in them to do the story well. I hope they do, but their track record hasn't done much. Their story about Tyce a couple years ago was swept under the rug and mostly scrubbed from the internet; I don't know the behind the scenes details of that story or what led to its being removed from the site, but that ordeal doesn't make me think that this is the right outlet for this important, serious reporting. I do sincerely wish them success, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9weqnWBaehg

OnStage Blog makes the BroadwayWorld message boards look like a Pulitzer-winning newsroom operation.

OnStage is an amateurish operation, run by and featuring folks who aren’t journalists or even particularly good writers. They lack the resources to do thorough fact checking, their posts are often overlong, unwieldy, and nakedly biased or trying to force a story.

An exposé like this requires a lot of work and skill and sensitivity, and frankly nothing they have done suggests they could successfully pull it off.

...to say nothing of the legal challenges they could face.

Updated On: 11/18/20 at 09:46 AM

They definitely need to get their act together. I was surprised at how positive this development seems to be received on Twitter vs. here, and by people I generally trust (on the former)!

https://twitter.com/OnstageBlog/status/1328877942672338945/retweets/with_comments

A few others were on FB that I can't link to.

Kad said: "An article like this is emblematic of the issues with OnStage. It seeks the answer to a reasonable question: why would Broadway producers and theater owners donate to far-right senator Roy Blunt? But the author apparently didn’t actually attempt to reach out to these people to get their rationale for doing so, it simply hammers the question over and over again while saying why they shouldn’t have. And then the sole comment on the article points out that Blunt is a key vote on the appropriations committee and would be needed for things like pension reform."

This one is a near perfect emblem of the ignorance, naiveté, and lack of scholarship of that site. The fact is that Blunt is a key player for the Save Our Stages Act, which he has co-sponsored with Schumer et al. That's really all you need to know here to understand this. Now we can argue (as I would, vigorously) that we need to get ALL money out of politics, but until that happens, people pay for support of their issues and politicians lavish praise on their opponents when they find common ground. (This is as common for Bernie as it is for Biden, and an m.o. that is getting him compared with the positive attributes of LBJ.) The blog is so dumb they don't even see the forest for the trees.

BroadwayNYC2 said: "I don’t think it’s a secret we have a media literacy issue in this country, and it ain’t just conservatives. The call is coming from inside the house, and it isn’t getting better"

100%

Meanwhile, from the LA Times:

https://twitter.com/cashleelee/status/1329125554155470849

You mean the one that was killed by the NYT? The whole point is that it wasn't published.

Just very inelegant phrasing from them, which is... another reason why this should not be pursued by OnStage.

Updated On: 11/18/20 at 01:53 PM