Nonprofits will fund Boston Globe’s classical music critic

Nonprofits will fund Boston Globe’s classical music critic

The groups — the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation — will help the Globe pay for Zoe Madonna to be a music critic at the newspaper for 10 months, beginning Monday.

The arrangement, which could expand to other papers if it is successful, is seen as a potential way to halt the erosion of classical music criticism in America, where many magazines and newspapers no longer employ classical critics and, increasingly, no longer review classical music.

If the trend began because general interest in classical music was shrinking, many arts groups now fear that the disappearance of media coverage is hastening that decline.

The pilot program will help fill the gap while Jeremy Eichler, the Globe’s staff classical critic, is on leave as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.