Kudos to the Bee for burying in the middle of Metro this story about a protest outside its doors regarding its coverage of local theater. Among organizer’s Jackie Schultz’s beefs was that the paper lacked a forum for readers to respond to its coverage of local arts. As you probably know, reader, the Bee has had comments on articles now for several weeks. Luckily Schultz had a few understudy arguments ready to go.
The Sac Rag 
The Bee has a monopoly on entertainment criticism? Have these people never heard of the Sac News and Review? They probably had to step over a couple dozen copies of the SN&R just to get to the protest.
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You’re right Carl, I remember being sorta surprised that there are SNR racks right in front of the Bee.
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I heard from people who were not the official organizers, so they may have had their own agenda, that the protest was more about The Bee’s theatre section seperating equity or professional theatre from community theatre and putting community theatre in entirely different section, meaning an equity show in SF was getting better coverage than a community show locally.
I really don’t know enough about this one to be real opionated, but I’m sure there is another side to the story. The Bee article makes the protest look really silly, and maybe it was, but I’ve talke to some intelligent local theatre folks with some legitimate gripes about recent changes in The Bee’s policy toward local theatre.
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I think Jackie may be familiar with SN&R. She has received a paycheck from them.
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SactoMcS: Where are you getting your intel on that?
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CoolDMZ: Jackie worked on special events for SN&R including directing their Unity events. I was at atleast one meeting where she represented herself as an employee of News & Review’s activities in the community. I don’t know if she’s still associated with them.
Regarding everything in KLJ’s post: Sure, everyone has gripes about Bee coverage, whether it’s theatre or high school sports or politics or Marmaduke. The march was because Jackie’s show is in trouble and she needs to do whatever she can to save her theatre. If she can get others to demonize The Bee to march with her she will. Capital Public Radio did a segment on this issue on Insight. Check it out for a balanced discussion from many members of the theatre community, plus Marcus Crowder.
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Marmaduke and his owners have a 100% monopoly on the Bee’s Marmaduke coverage!
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http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A148957
The link goes to a N&R story on the protest.
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“The Bee has a monopoly on entertainment criticism? Have these people never heard of the Sac News and Review?”
None of this probably really matters anymore,
but, just to clarify…if anyone reads this or really cares…
The theatre audience in Sac is mostly 50+ in age.
SN&R does not have complete theatre coverage and/or listings. Most go to the Bee to find out what is playing and read the reviews.
The Studio Theatre is a small entrepenurial company, about 10 employees at any time and most of those are the actors in the shows. Why is it that we are all attacking a small struggling business and not looking at the bigger picture, what was really said and what the ramifications might be. This was a clear case of David vs Goliath, and you all side with Goliath? Why not look at what might be said by a small business owner that works 24/7 in the theatre and has for the last 25 years? Jackie Schultz has done nothing but contribute to the growth of theatre in the region and helped many, many other companies and built 3 theatre in this town herself. Why attack her if you do not even know her and have not bothered to go to her theatre and see the work. Her plight was and is real. The criticism of this fledgling Equity company was insensitive and harsh. Hundreds of support letters and reviews contrary to the Sacramento Bee’s voice could not stop the downward slide of the company and so Sacramento is losing a committed and wonderfully passionate small theatre organization. They become a rental house in Jan 2007. They can no longer produce their own work. Hopefully they will rise again, but it is anyone’s guess right now.
If you care about the arts and don’t just sit on a blog and complain, go to theatre. The Studio Theatre is not the only one in trouble.
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