Highlights of the Center’s findings:

·		There are currently three publications that can make the claim of being true national papers—the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
·		The New York Times is the only one of the three national papers to give sustained coverage across a wide range of the creative spectrum. Distinctions between high and popular culture still matter in the Times, even while those distinctions are vanishing everywhere. The Times resolves this dilemma through its use of a critical vocabulary that places issues in terms of a broader cultural context.
·		USA Today’s offerings seem to reflect surveys by the newspaper industry on readers’ interests in the arts.
·		The Wall Street Journal’s arts coverage often provides what some critics complain is lacking in much local arts reporting; it focuses on particular creative works and gives less emphasis to personalities or gossip.
·		While arts reporters and writers in all three newspapers regularly use the language of cultural criticism to discuss the significance of a particular trend in the arts, they are far less likely to consider the importance of policy implications.
·		As the arts are shaped increasingly by everything from conflicts over intellectual property or content regulation to the implications of new communications technologies, newspaper arts coverage will need to address these themes more explicitly.

The complete text of the Center’s conclusions, along with the rest “Reporting the Arts,” is available on the National Arts Journalism Program web-site.