I was interested to cover the convergence of social networks and fine arts institutions in a story running in today’s Inquirer. While it focuses on Philadelphia examples, there are broader implications, I think.

On Valentine’s Day, Pennsylvania Ballet staff members stood in the Merriam Theater’s lobby handing out coasters that bore what might have seemed a strange suggestion coming from an arts organization: Go to our YouTube channel.

What the mostly graying matinee audience made of the invitation to an online video-sharing site is unclear. What is clear is that the Pennsylvania Ballet is not alone in lusting after online social-network users.

The Kimmel Center has a Flickr photostream. The Curtis Institute of Music is on LinkedIn. The Arden Theatre and the Franklin Institute use Twitter. The Philadelphia Orchestra has a MySpace page. Read the rest here.

Go read the story and comment, Digg it here, and then come back and see the extras that didn’t make it into print.

Shawn Stone, the Pennsylvania Ballet’s market director

• “We are always trying to build newer audiences, particular the 20 to 30-somethings.”
• “To reach this younger audience there are several new media tools. YouTube is the first piece. We wanted to launch the channel to heighten our availability, promote the artists, show behind-the-scenes ways to see the artists in rehearsal, to see what the dancers do.”
• “We want to create a dialogue, get them to come to a show and really be turned out by it.”
• “The Web has changed everyone’s lives. It’s working it’s way up. I’m a bit older than this group, but I have a Facebook page. Technology is expanding.”
• “Our audiences have a lot to say, so we want to give them more opportunities to voice their opinions and ways to spread the word.”
• “We see this viral marketing and keeping this dialogue going a really great way to build our audiences. We have to listen to what they have to say.”
• “We want to find new ways to show how they can become more aware of the dancers and get to know them. It’s much more of a personal relationship.”
• In the past, you came to see the show and you went home. You have an experience now. You have a community and can make friends interested.
• “It’s not direct mail and not newspapers but a direct way to build a network of people who are actually passionate about what you do.”

Janine Zappone, a PR associate at the Arden Theatre

• Zappone says her hours have changed too. “All I need are the log-ons, so on a Tuesday night, I can pop in, write some jazzy copy and do some real targeted marketing in a way you just couldn’t do in the past.”
• “We’re in the middle of the subscriber survey. While theater is known as primarily used by the white-haired generation, who are very loyal subscribers, it doesn’t mean we can’t reach them with social media, too. A number of our subscribers who are 65 or older point to Facebook and say they use it.”
• “When we ask for something, they’re really enjoyed writing their thoughts, reading the musings at the Arden, but not necessarily the response.”

J. Edward Cambron, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s vice president for marketing

• After years of keeping appearances, Cambron said, the orchestra has focused during the last 18 months on “aggressively targeting college students in a college town.”
• “Social media is a very big part of that marketing strategy.”
• “It’s another tool. Not a cost cut. When we started, I remember when we started selling tickets online, but we still needed a box office. It’s like that. Eventually it could potentially cut costs through less advertising. But for now, it’s just another tool, a targeted. tool.
• Increasingly, Cambron is directing younger members of his staff to be dedicated to social media.
• “You can’t control how they talk about you, what is said in this dialogue you’ve created.”

I wrote of the technological ramifications for TechnicallyPhilly.com.

Pike Place Market in Seattle.Photo by Alex Irwin. See more at AlexIrwin.wordpress.com

Last month, Alex Irwin, a good friend and a very hip arts blogger and Philadelphia music writer, posted that he gave over publishing rights of two of his photos to an online travel guide for Seattle, where he was visiting his girlfriend when snapped the pictures.

Wrong move, I say. Let me tell you why.

I hardly waited in posting a comment on his blog:

I was with Alex at one time. I questioned whether I could market myself as a photographer considering that, like Alex, I had no real formal training. Alex is a trained journalist, a Progressive Business Publications editor and a professional arts and music blogger with a growing portfolio, which increasingly includes taking photos and video. Welcome to the new age of journalism where you need to be able to do everything, in at least a serviceable fashion.

Crowd-sourced Web sites like Schmap, the online/desktop travel guide site to which Alex gave his photos, are making money on the backs of free-content providers

After attending and taking photos at the Obama inauguration, I got a similar offer via Flickr:

I found your photo on flickr and I would love to use it for a story on NowPublic.com. We are a crowd sourced news website powered entirely by the ideas, stories, photographs and eyewitness accounts of people like you. We need your photos for our live inauguration coverage!

I declined the no-pay offer, and I hope more people, particularly anyone in the media field of any note, would, too. Alex Irwin can take a photo better than the average slob. He is a trained journalist, so I think he, like the rest of us, should be paid for it. It’s about honesty and transparency, I know I am not an exclusively trained photographer, but it comes part and parcel now with my product as a high-caliber multimedia freelance journalist. I won’t offer my work for free and think anyone who does hurts the rest of us.

As I put it in a previous post:

I think in this age of journalism, we all need to diversify our talents, but do so honestly. I am not going to make a pitch or close a deal with photography, and certainly not with Web design. But it can sweeten the deal. That is the difference.

Lead with what you know best, supplement with what you’ve learned or can manage. [Source]

So what do you think? Am I just being as stubborn as a newspaper wanting to charge for online content? Is this anti-capitalistic, or am I just hoping to set a precedent to fight the flow that content creation is a much less profitable act than content dissemination?

Talk to me.