This article charts key developments and cross-national variations in the coverage of foreign culture (i.e., classical and popular music, dance, film, literature, theater, television, and visual arts) in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. elite newspapers between 1955 and2005. Such coverage signals the awareness of foreign culture among national elites and the degree and direction of "globalization from within. " Using content analysis, we examine the degree, direction, and diversity of the international orientation of arts journalism for each country and cultural genre. Results denote how international arts and culture coverage has increased in Europe but not in the United States. Moreover, the centrality of a country in the cultural "world-system" offers a better explanation for cross-national differences in international orientation than do other country-level characteristics, such as size and cultural policy framework. Recorded and performance-based genres differ markedly in their levels of internationalization, but the effect of other genre-level characteristics, such as language dependency and capital intensiveness, is not clear. In each country, international coverage remains concentrated on a few countries, of which the United States has become the most prominent. Although the global diversity of coverage has increased, non-Western countries are still underrepresented.

This article examines the activities of literary reviewers and the conditions under which they perform their task of judging recently published works of fiction. Reviewers and other members of the institution of criticism usually present their assessments as a highly personal matter, in which the intrinsic properties of the texts under consideration are focused on. To understand why this view is incorrect one must consider the choices and statements of reviewers in relation with the social environment in which they come about. Following a theoretical discussion of the institutional nature of critical choices and judgements, an empirical analysis is undertaken of the selection Dutch reviewers made from the supply of new fiction titles in the 1970s and 1990s. The findings show that reviewers tend to be on the safe side when dealing with recently published texts. In addition to the text itself, they take due note of extra-textual indicators of quality, such as the publishing house that marketed the title and, especially, the assessments of other critics. In doing so, they reduce the uncertainty as to which works deserve their attention, Hence, they reduce the risk of making the choices that might jeopardize their status as literary experts.* Special thanks go to Kees van Rees and two Poetics reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts and to Pieter Nieuwint for his editing.

The shaping influence of cultural mediators, in particular their legitimizing power, has led cultural scholars to coin them 'tastemakers', 'gatekeepers', 'surrogate consumers', 'reputational entrepreneurs', or even 'co-producers' of the work of art. Yet, in practice, mediators perform highly different and often distinct activities according to their particular contributions in the (increasingly) vertically differentiated process of cultural production. This article discusses the various roles and activities of cultural mediators, followed by a review of the role and impact of critics and other mediators in the production and consumption of culture.

Cultural goods and activities are classified with respect to one another. Even though systems of cultural classification present themselves as natura! and enduring, they are products of human action, continually subject to selection and change. An important role in the making and mediation of cultural classifications is played by agents and institutions whose job it is to make (quality) assessments with respect to the supply of cultural artifacts. The present study considered the coverage of artistic products and practices by art newsmakers in the daily press. The first aim was to identify the changes that occurred between 1965-1990 regarding the amount of space given by Dutch daily newspapers to art and to specific art forms. To gain a differentiated view, both popular and elite papers were taken into account. The second objective was to determine how forces extrinsic to the newspaper organization have affected the provision of information on the arts.The analysis shows that there were major changes in newspaper coverage of the arts in this period, resulting in a new hierarchy of art forms in terms of the proportion of space they received. The art forms that benefited most from this reshuffle are pop music (both in popular and elite papers), literature and film (in elite papers), and cabaret, musicals, and shows (in popular papers). The big 'losers' in both categories of papers are theatre, classical music, and applied art, while visual art more or less consolidated its position. Dance received considerably more attention, but could not escape its low-ranking position in the papers' hierarchy. These changes appear to be closely related to changes in the audience for the arts, developments in the arts supply, and pressures from advertisers and competitors.

In this article, we describe general features of popular music coverage in elite newspapers in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands from 1955 to 2005. Drawing on data from content analysis of over 4,000 newspaper articles sampled in four reference years (1955, 1975, 1995, and 2005), we document broad changes and continuities in the extent, focus, and form of popular music coverage in mainstream media outlets of each country.In any art world, media discourse plays an important institutional role in distributing recognition and prestige to certain types of people and productions (Becker). Through such discourse, music critics act as "gatekeepers of taste" (Shuker 92), operating as cultural intermediaries who shape opinions and perceptions about different types of music and musicians through the evaluations and interpretations they offer. As such, media discourse represents a valuable resource for musicians and the actors involved in producing their music. Indeed, musicians recognize the impact that such media attention can have in helping them sustain nascent musical careers (Brennan 222) and record company publicists often measure success in column inches of press coverage (Negus 124). Moreover, beyond the impact that media discourse can have on individual actors within the field of popular music, it can also provide a legitimating ideology that elevates the status of the entire field (Baumann).Yet, despite its widely recognized significance, Steve Jones (1) notes that popular music discourse has been the subject of little systematic study and scholarly publication. Although recent years have seen more attention to the popular music press (Atton; Jones; Lindberg et al.), much of this research focuses on American and British rock criticism in specialty magazines or fanzines (for exceptions, see Pires; Schmutz "Social and Symbolic"; van Venrooij and Schmutz). While such studies have