/folkspotlights/ was a house word on the old site. It meant: look at this person, this bill, this week. The rebuild keeps the word and the path. It drops the habit of turning a spotlight into a ranking.
What a spotlight is now
A short door into a longer page. The two heritage spotlight essays are:
- How to walk a city festival program — not a top five.
- Spoken word beside folk rooms — not a reconstructed interview.
The gallery sits beside them. The interviews hub explains the ethics.
Why keep the old word
Because incoming links used it, and because it is a good verb. Magazines should still point. They should point at official programs, at rooms that publish a calendar, and at questions a reader can take into a weekend.
They should not point at a fake winner.
If you want to pitch a new spotlight, it needs a public subject, a reason it helps someone plan, and no demand that we “get you on the cover”. There is no cover in the old sense. There is a URL, a title, and a standard.