By KATE ROSENBAUM
J Alumni News staff
L. Kent Wolgamott
Kent Wolgamott planned on being a great political journalist, but he said that “didn’t really work out.” Instead, he has been an arts and entertainment reporter at the Lincoln Journal Star for 25 years.
“I always liked entertainment and music in particular,” Wolgamott said. “The guy who did entertainment (at the Lincoln paper) left, and I took his job. A couple months later, the political writer left. If those two things had happened in reverse, I probably would’ve been a political writer.”
Wolgamott did press work for a politician in Washington, D.C., before writing for the The Daily Nebraskan, The Grand Island Independent and the Journal Star, where he helped start the weekly Ground Zero entertainment section.
Wolgamott says he made the right choice.
“I think I fit better with it than the political thing. I like the freedom that you get being able to write in entertainment and the ability to express your opinion. I write movie reviews, music reviews, art reviews and columns. All of those things are what I think.”
Wolgamott has reviewed more than 3,000 films as well as national and local music and art.
Journalism faculty member Rick Alloway said Wolgamott’s Nebraska roots are important to his reporting.
“A local reviewer understands his or her community and knows how to review based on what that person’s knowledge is of what the local community expects from their arts organizations,” Alloway said. “When you have somebody writing from Los Angeles or New York City, that person has a slightly different take on what’s appropriate and what the prevailing attitudes are.”
A changing landscape
Wolgamott graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1979 with majors in journalism, political science and geography. He began working as an arts and entertainment reporter in 1985. He said the nature and subject of his reporting have changed in the past 25 years, most recently thanks to the onslaught of news available online.
“Music writers say, and it’s a little overstated, that we’re in a dying industry covering a dying industry,” he said.
He tries to combat the effect of the Internet on journalism by using technology to get out information in the best way possible. When he goes to a show, he will write a blog about it. He may turn the blog into a column the next week because the demands are different.
“The key is to get the information out in a way that people want to use it and want to get it.”
Wolgamott said he also has seen a change in what he writes about.
“There aren’t very many of those huge superstar bands,” he said. But he still finds he has plenty of material to cover.
“I write about visual art, I write about movies and I write about music. At big papers, they have one person or two that write about each one of those things, so I have a lot to cover. You have to like it, and you have to be really interested in it.”
Alloway attests to Wolgamott’s knowledge of the arts.
“Kent’s really plugged into the arts; he writes from a position of strength. He knows the artists, he knows the musicians. His longevity in his role in the Midwest helps him a lot. He goes to a lot of local and regional conventions and festivals all the time,” Alloway said. “He knows most of the people in the Midwest and in the nation in the arts community, and they know him.”
Local arts
Wolgamott has been studying arts and entertainment in Lincoln for years and said the current art scene has vitality as a whole it hasn’t had before. He attributes this to the overlap between the music scene, the gallery scene and independent filmmakers.
Wolgamott also thinks Lincoln’s music scene is finding a new life and that Lincoln has a healthier, more inventive and productive music scene than Omaha.
The Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, located on the UNL campus, also makes Lincoln more cosmopolitan, Wolgamott noted.
“What you have in Lincoln is that sort of art film concentration, and that changes the nature of the movie experience,” he said.
UNL is an important contributor to the arts in Lincoln, he said.
“A lot of the arts in Lincoln spring out of the university, and if the university wasn’t there or wasn’t so involved in the arts, there wouldn’t be nearly as much in Lincoln.”
Alloway thinks Wolgamott’s reporting style helps engage local readers in the arts.
“Kent writes in a very conversational style. Kent loves and appreciates good art, but he’s able to write about it like the average folks in the audience and doesn’t ever come across as being snooty or snobbish. He’s very approachable and writes in a way that the average partaker of the arts can read and say, ‘I know what he’s talking about.’”
Jeremy Buckley, a UNL alumnus and who books music for Lincoln’s Bourbon Theatre, said the presence of a dedicated local arts and entertainment reporter for Lincoln’s newspaper is a testament to the city’s vibrant art scene.
“For one, it shows that Lincoln is a happening place, with different events and community activities happening at a rate to justify coverage,” Buckley said in an e-mail. “And for the scene to remain healthy, it is key that those events stay on the public radar as much as possible.
“Someone in Kent’s position as an entertainment writer is bestowed the responsibility of keeping the local public in the know.”
Local journalist, national notoriety
Although Wolgamott has worked in Lincoln for most of his career, he has received national attention. Last summer, he was one of 12 U.S. citizens selected to be part of the International Arts Journalism Institute in Visual Arts, funded by the State Department and run by the National Endowment for the Arts. Wolgamott joined 11 American and 12 international journalists for three weeks of educational opportunities in Washington, D.C., New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Wolgamott’s work has been well received by artists who have performed in Lincoln. For example, Kris Kristofferson performed in Lincoln several years ago while he was in town filming a television movie. After reading Wolgamott’s review, Kristofferson called Wolgamott, saying he felt like he’d been sending out messages in a bottle for years and someone finally got them.
While Wolgamott has worked with national artists, he said Lincoln will continue to be his home.
“I started journalism in 1981. If you had told me I’d be here for more than five years, I’d have told you you’re crazy, and yet it’s turned out that I stayed.
“There’s something about Lincoln that just felt like the right place for me.”
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