Joshua Bell - Washington Post Experiment

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:

    There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
    Those undreamt accidents that have made me
    Seeing that Fame has perished this long while,
    Being but a part of ancient ceremony
    Notorious, till all my priceless things
    Are but a post the passing dogs defile.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.
    Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)