Washington Post Experiment
In an experiment initiated by The Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, Bell donned a baseball cap and played as an incognito busker at the Metro subway station L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C. on January 12, 2007. The experiment was videotaped on hidden camera; of the 1,097 people who passed by, only seven stopped to listen to him, and only one recognized him. For his nearly 45-minute performance, Bell collected $32.17 from 27 passersby (excluding $20 from the passerby who recognized him). The night before, he earned considerably more playing the same repertoire at a concert. Weingarten won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for his article on the experiment. The Washington Post posted the video on YouTube.
Read more about this topic: Joshua Bell
Famous quotes containing the words washington, post and/or experiment:
“A Republic! Look in the history of the Earth ... To be the first man—not the Dictator, not the Sylla, but the Washington or the Aristides, the leader in talent and truth—is next to the Divinity!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)