A headline on the front page of the SF Chronicle last weekend read:
Food bloggers dish up plates of spicy criticism:
Formerly formal
discipline of reviewing becomes a free-for-all for online amateurs
It argued, essentially, that paid writers –aka real journalists- have
editors and are therefore more ethical and objective than rampant
barbaric bloggers with only fifteen bucks a months to Typepad for a
soapbox on which to stand and shout into the void.
Wow. What a revelation! Can we possibly print a more tiresome
argument than this? I read it and, frankly, couldn't even be arsed to
respond. Then my friend Sam's post this morning got me going for a
minute. She was threatening to quit food blogging altogether as a
result of that silly article. Now, it took me a few minutes to realize
that today is April Fool, and her post was but a smart April Fool's
joke. The post made me go read all the bruhaha and snark that came
from that article anyway. Besides that yawn-inducing argument, there
were also snide comments –in Mr.Bauer's subsequent blog post and the
comment section- about bloggers misusing their 'fame' and demanding
better treatment and freebies from restaurants.
That argument is just so silly I can hardly muster up the energy to
respond, yet I am but an idle blogger with no better things to do so I
will anyway. First of all, not all journalists are created equal, and
not all bloggers are cut from the same cloth. Speaking of them as
though every journalist has the same respectable ethics and all
bloggers behave with the same objectionable behaviors is just plain
ignorant.
The article pointed out a frequent critique on the issue of bloggers
vs. journalists -that bloggers are ill-qualified when compared to
journalists in the field. I'm not sure if I buy this one. Is it
always true? Frank Bruni got his lofty job with merely an ability to
write engagingly while having no apparent qualification in the field of
gastronomy. Notice I said 'apparent'? Having not made acquaintance of
Mr.Bruni himself nor his qualifications, I am in fact ill-qualified to
judge either of them. For all I know he is the best home cook in the
world or has the superhuman taste memory of the Emperor of Wine Robert
Parker –said about- himself. When Marlena Spieler wrote a piece on the
restaurant L'Arpège for the Chronicle Food Section, the meal she
reported was her very first wide-eye experience at the restaurant.
I've been to L'Arpège more times than I care to remember in the last
few years. Doesn't that make me essentially more qualified than
Ms.Spieler to write about the restaurant, even if I had to pay for the
meals myself and I had no editor to speak of but my Spell Checker?
Recent Comments