LA Times Food Blog Leaves Bad Taste

Here in L.A., the fish wrap of record — for restaurant reviews as much as for local news — remains the Los Angeles Times. Every Wednesday we skip the front page over coffee and turn straight to the weekly Food section. Though wincingly pedigreed at times, most of the critiques and recipe writing are juicy, educational and in step with leading trends. Plus the pictures are food porn perfect.
Last month, the food section launched a blog, called “The Daily Dish” — the latest in the paper’s interactive campaign to beef up its web publishing (and advertising revenue). We got giddy at first, revved at the idea that the Times food writers we read every week would be joining the blogosphere, granting readers and other food bloggers a discussion forum larger than most of our individual blogs. But after watching the blog for the last week or two, we’re not sure the editorial staff really wants to be blogging, and if they even know what the implications of that are, or whether these old-school print journalism foodies are being forced by management to half-heartedly blog. At least from the interaction we’ve had with the site it seems that the project is just the latest in a string of sorry, superficial makeovers rather than monumental shifts at the paper.
If you asked the Times lead restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila (known in some kitchen circles as “the Snake”) what she thought the purpose of the blog was, what would she say? Hard to tell: So far she’s mostly shared tips for obscure wines. Other writers have chimed in with advice on hot spots and products, not far from what they offer weekly in the paper, except for heightened level of restaurant gossip. Are these staffers interested in getting feedback, comments and even tips from their devoted foodie readers? Are they interested in building relationships with the dozens of established food bloggers who already cover kitchen equipment, French cheese, dessert recipes and beer in a non-competitive, information-share environment?
Nope, not interested.
We recently commented on a posting by beverage writer Charles Perry. (Read full exchange here.) He does the beer and spirits, so we’ve read his byline closely in the past. A week ago he gave a lengthy recommendation for “The Beer Guppy’s Guide to Southern California,” by Jay Sheveck. It’s one of those comprehensive bible to the beer scene kinda things. We respectfully suggested that the number of beer blogs that cover L.A. and SoCal are also great resources for free. We listed a couple like Hair of the Dog Dave, Beer Chick, and ours. Since “The Daily Dish” links to only the most mainstream of L.A. food blogs we figured it’d be worth pointing readers to. (Six hours later our comment finally got published.)
And Perry did not agree. Though blogs can be “updated instantly,” he responded, “they are still a long way from replacing books. So far, no beer blog I’ve seen even tries to be a comprehensive reference.” He had a point, beer bloggers of all people are not known to painstakingly collect hours of operation, they generally will link to a breweries website where all that information sits instead. We felt that missed the larger point: that there are hundreds of blogs that people can peruse for different opinions, for insider tips, for feature writing on brewery tours, for homebrew advice; all the stuff that this one thin volume attempts to wrap with a bow. In the print version of the paper, we would never expect blog mention, but why not online?
“What is often missed in this print-to-blog mentality,” we commented, “is that one ‘definitive’ source rarely beats 1,000 sources.”
No further comments from Perry (or any other readers for that matter) until a day later when this email turns up in the Hot Knives inbox, presumably by accident! It seems to be email correspondence from Perry to a web editor who asked about the exchange. Either way it reeks of condescension.
“This guy is getting tiresome. I know he wants us to pay attention to blogs, but in this context what they’re doing is totally different from what Sheveck’s book is doing, so why should we? And his big point doesn’t impress me much. If you’ve got the time to comb through a thousand sources, and the energy to evaluate them, more power to you. If not, life goes on. I think this is a rather young person.”
If leaving 2 comments, not much more than 100 words, makes us “tiresome,” that doesn’t bode well for Perry’s career as a blogger. And if he really wants to pull the age card and paint himself as a geezer Republican, that’s his choice.
It says a lot about where he is coming from. He’s used to being the on-high editorial judgment about all things beverage for the biggest paper on the West Coast and he doesn’t have to listen to, or engage, the wise-ass suggestions of a couple eager-to-discuss-beer readers. Blogging, by this view, will always be inferior because it’s the practice of non-professionals and gives voice to many people’s opinions rather than a few. That’s fine. We just always thought that’s what blogs had going for them.
We wish Charles Perry good luck teaching himself a new trick and will return to perusing our peers’ good-natured discussion of food and beer.