<B>Standard recruits seven to boost arts coverage</B><BR>By Claire Cozens in The Guardian<P> <BR>Norman Lebrecht is continuing in his drive to take the London Evening Standard's arts coverage upmarket with the appointment of seven new contributors to the paper's arts pages....<P>Lebrecht has also hired two new dance critics: Judith Flanders, a former publishing director of Weidenfeld & Nicolson; and Sarah Frater, a former editor of Dance Gazette and contributor to the Observer and the Financial Times.<P><A HREF="http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,7495,670940,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><P><B>Stuart adds</B>: It's good news that The Evening Standard is going to give more coverage to the Arts and Lebrecht is anything but boring. An example is his resolutely held belief (in the face of all arguments) that the ROH should be privitised. <P>The article above seems to suggest that Luke Jennings, the current dance correspondent, is going, although that is not explicitly stated. I look forward to his reviews and trust his eye more than most. In addition he is always ready to review a variety of dance styles. <P>If he is to leave, then best wishes to Luke from criticaldance and I hope we continue to see his work in the media. <p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited March 21, 2002).]

I agree Stuart, I like Luke Jennings' style of writing and I trust him always to say something positive - none of this "shouldn't be in the repertoire" stuff.

The changes at The Evening Standard have taken place and the initial impression is that there is a lot more arts coverage in general now. However, I was rather concerned that the Royal Ballet review that I read in Monday's paper edition did not appear on their website yesterday or today. <P>I contacted the ES and the omission appears to have been an oversight. When I spoke to the friendly ES website man he was surprised that it wasn't up there and promised to correct matters asap. He was interested that a number of websites put up links to the dance reviews and articles, thereby increasing readership. <P>Yesterday's review was by Judith Flanders and one or two of her comments made me raise my eyebrows, but clearly a single review is no basis to form a judgement, so let's all watch developments. <P>When the review is up on the ES site we'll post it as usual. <P><B>Later</B> - It's now in our <A HREF="http://www.criticaldance.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/000245.html" TARGET=_blank><B>'RB Giselle' thread</B></A> <BR> <BR><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited March 26, 2002).]