Local journalism is in a serious kind of crisis. It has been since the dawn of the digital age. Well worn tracks for building revenue evaporated slowly then all at once creating a news and information drought. For a brief time micro blogging, or city blogs, filled in some of the gaps where the first victims of this new world began to falter, independent local media. (R.I.P. Philadelphia Weekly and City Paper.) Few of those early 2010s digital counterparts made it past the tests of the great social media boom. And today, the local media landscape largely consists of a handful of legacy media outlets constrained for resources, very many PR companies, and a rotating cast of brand-partnered lifestyle influencers anointed by the current algorithm.

With the 2024 election, there’s been a lot of talk in the chattering classes that the left needs to invest more in left-leaning podcasts. The broad idea being that in the vacuum of reliable sources and paywalled news that people with money and right-leaning ideals were just better at holding up an emerging information ecosystem that then reflected their views. I suspect that it’s more complicated than that, but it’s interesting that that quickly became a wannabe takeaway from Trump’s win.

Where I am absolutely certain is that I want to live in a city, and country, with robust and resounding arts and culture. And what I know is that this can not take shape without reliable and dedicated arts news and information media.

I recently came across this Threads post by Philly-based artist, Michele Scott. I’ve known Michele for a few years–even hired him to create a mural for the 2023 Flower Show. And I’ve heard this sentiment so many times. If you are an artist working in Philly, even if you have one of the many PR teams helping you out, it can be impossible to get coverage of your work.

And, not to state the obvious, but coverage is important. And coverage from dedicated sources especially so. The wider public deserve to have places they can go to for local arts news. Artists deserve to have platforms to tell the stories of their work. Philly’s arts ecosystem requires arts media outlets to flourish.  

I can not tell you the number of times an artist has told me that Streets Dept was the first local media outlet to cover a project of theirs. Or that we’ve handled their interview with more care.

A great example of that, and bringing us briefly back to the election, was when Winston Tseng created an artwork design promoting Kamala Harris for president that got widespread attention. The day his artwork began to spread like wildfire across social media, I reached out to him. At the time, no one yet knew who designed the artwork. We talked for several days as larger and larger news outlets began to pick up the story. Winston mentioned to me that dozens of local and national news organizations were requesting an interview. I sent him my questions anyhow, assuming he’d go with CNN or someone with a much bigger reach. He responded a day later thanking me for the thoughtful questions. Winston said he wanted to break his silence with Streets Dept, because we just knew what the fuck we were talking about. We knew how to ask the questions. Which questions to ask. And he trusted us to tell his story.

Now, that was a one-on-one interview, but I moved into using “we” because Streets Dept is more than me. In fact, most of our interviews are created by our Lead Contributor Eric Dale, who’s been with Streets Dept for seven years now. And earlier this year we also brought on a second regular contributor Siena Christopherson. (That’s the three of us pictured at the top of this post.)  

While Eric and Siena work with me to develop and write articles/ interviews for Streets Dept, I’ve taken on partnerships with Mural Arts Philadelphia and WHYY. My goal is to work with Mural Arts to curate and produce public art projects for emerging local artists; and with WHYY to create a podcast, called Art Outside, to continue to build a pipeline for the stories of Philly’s artists with our area’s most trusted legacy media outlet. But Streets Dept’s blog and social media will always be a bedrock for news and information about the artists who create in our public space.

In fact, Streets Dept is one of only two blogs in the entire city of Philadelphia that’s solely dedicated to the arts. One of only two! And we’re the only media outlet in the city dedicated entirely to the art of Philly’s public space. And this in a city with thousands of works of public art and more created each year.  

Joe Rogan is not coming to document and archive the artwork of Philly. And would we want him to? I want to grow Streets Dept. I want to hire more contributors. I want to tell more of the stories of the working artists of this city. And I’m asking for your help to make that possible.

Yes, you get some wonderful benefits by joining our Patreon. We work hard on that. But perhaps most importantly you help us grow to better support the arts ecosystem in Philly. And damn, I think that’s pretty important.  

I hope you can join our Patreon. And I hope you can share this post with a few like-minded folks you think might also like to see this Streets Dept media project grow.

Thank you so much,

Conrad Benner, Founder/Editor of Streets Dept