This Week’s Highlights:
The Kennedy Center’s board voted last month to close its building, and this week the center said the Honors will be held December 7 at Capital One Arena instead (AP). A Washington Post analysis found ticket sales on pace to fall by two-thirds, donations down 40% in four months, and a development staff cut from 96 to 14 (The Washington Post). And on Monday Utah Republican Mike Lee blocked a bill co-sponsored by his colleague Lisa Murkowski barring demolition of a congressional memorial without Congress’s approval (CNN).
The Nashville Symphony suspended its season effective October 18, furloughing all 77 musicians and half its staff against a $10 million deficit (The Tennessean). The Cleveland Orchestra’s players, backed by a $329 million endowment, struck for three days and won 5% annual raises and a rule that the music director can’t hire anyone the audition committee’s majority hasn’t approved (Ideastream).
The Third Circuit Federal Court held that Ross Intelligence, a legal-research startup, can’t claim fair use for training its AI on Westlaw’s editorial headnotes, the first appeals ruling of its kind (Nieman Lab).
Banned Books Week begins Sunday, and Seattle Public Library’s Books Unbanned, an e-card for readers 13 to 26 anywhere in the country, has passed 1.1 million checkouts on nearly $900,000 in donations (KOMO). Xander Parish, the first British principal at the Mariinsky Ballet, opens the Nouveaux Ballets Russes in Florence on March 14 with a Swan Lake set in Belle Époque Paris (Pointe).
We collected handfuls of stories this week. You can see all of them below, organized by topic.
See you next week.
Doug
