LTHForum.com. Not a Newspaper.

LTHForum.com. Not a Newspaper.

I regularly read food reviews in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, and I’m proud to write restaurant reviews and longer, food-related articles for the Chicago Reader and TimeOut Chicago. I feel there are several ways that internet-based social networks such as LTHForum.com offer consumers something different than what’s offered in traditional, ink-on-wood-pulp vehicles.

• Breadth. Many newspapers have one major food reviewer (e.g., Frank Bruni for the New York Times, Phil Vettel for the Chicago Tribune, etc.). There is no way that one person, or even several dozen people, can provide the depth of coverage made possible by LTHForum’s thousands of contributors who are constantly on the look-out for worthy places to eat and talk about. An argument against online forums and in favor of traditional expert-based media reviews might be that it’s harder for the sporadic reader of internet forums to locate valid viewpoints amidst a welter of random commentary. There’s validity to that claim.

• Depth. Drawing on the insights of a vast number of food enthusiasts, LTHForum delivers consistently detailed information about dining experiences around Chicago. On food chat sites, for any given restaurant, there are a spectrum of viewpoints represented, which would be logistically impossible for a traditional print medium to provide. It may take more time to get the complete story in an online forum, but there is a more complete story to be had, and because there are no column-inch restraints, posters can write as much as they want (and then it’s up to the reader to decide to read or not).

• Updateability. A major publication may review a big restaurant once every few years; because LTHForum has people eating at hundreds of restaurants every week, we’re in a good position to spot negative trends and issue “downhill alerts” about specific restaurants that may have lost their chef or their way. When a new restaurant appears, it’s covered sometimes within hours of opening; no old media can provide that kind of instant updating. Mainstream news sources wait a few weeks before reviewing a new restaurant, to give the place time to work out service issues and other kinks; with an online forum, such deference is usually not extended.

• Interactivity. This is perhaps the critical differentiator between old media and new media. The internet enables people to transmit ideas and then, sometimes within seconds, receive written responses from people as part of a continuing conversation. In this sense, an online forum is more like ham radio than it is like traditional paper-based media, yet like the latter, it’s written down for future reference and review. New media is made for those who can read and write – people who want to give back information.

Hammond

PS. Apologies if some of this seems elementary to the folks here, but I'm formulating thoughts out loud and, of course, welcome refinements or rebuttals.

Excellent points, Hammond. To your category, Interactivity, I'd like to add the following point. Chances are, I'll never have lunch with Phil Vettel or Frank Bruno. However, through LTH, I've had lots of meals with various luminaries of the food scene, including you. (Many of these people also write for print media and do blogs, or appear on radio and television.) It's certainly an incomparable reliability check to eat the meal identical to the reviewer at the same time. If anything, this illuminates subtle differences in reactions to the meal. Clearly, such a thing cannot take place in any other manner.

Exactly, Josephine! I clumsily attempted to articulate this after the GNR dinner. It would be similar to browsing through your favorite part of the bookstore, and then having lunch with the authors whose work you're perusing.

Mhays wrote:Exactly, Josephine! I clumsily attempted to articulate this after the GNR dinner. It would be similar to browsing through your favorite part of the bookstore, and then having lunch with the authors whose work you're perusing.

Except you're the author, too!

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:

Mhays wrote:Exactly, Josephine! I clumsily attempted to articulate this after the GNR dinner. It would be similar to browsing through your favorite part of the bookstore, and then having lunch with the authors whose work you're perusing.

Except you're the author, too!

Regards,

That feedback loop is somethng a newspaper, at least in its "paper" incarnation, cannot duplicate. The Tribune has The Stew, and this blog does provide for a feedback loop, but the small box where you type your comments seems to inhibit longer responses, and you certainly cannot post "original" works (i.e., discussions that are independent of those initiated by Tribune writers). This is a key differentiator between discussion forums, like ours, and blogs (with which we are usually and inaccurately grouped).

David Hammond wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:

Mhays wrote:Exactly, Josephine! I clumsily attempted to articulate this after the GNR dinner. It would be similar to browsing through your favorite part of the bookstore, and then having lunch with the authors whose work you're perusing.

Except you're the author, too!

Regards,

That feedback loop is somethng a newspaper, at least in its "paper" incarnation, cannot duplicate. The Tribune has The Stew, and this blog does provide for a feedback loop, but the small box where you type your comments seems to inhibit longer responses, and you certainly cannot post "original" works (i.e., discussions that are independent of those initiated by Tribune writers). This is a key differentiator between discussion forums, like ours, and blogs (with which we are usually and inaccurately grouped).

David, I agree with you on all of your points. I would argue however for a more precise, forum-specific definition of "feedback loop." I was kind of a weird kid and growing up, starting in junior high, I think, wrote a lot of long letters to the editor to newspapers and magazines. Probably because my writing was SO naive, I often received prompt, lengthy responses (to set me straight). (Not hard news or criticism, but one of the most memorable responses I received was via telephone from Randy Cohen, aka The Ethicist. I will remember that conversation for the rest of my life.) Some of my letters were published, the majority were not, but (perhaps because I'm really not much less naive now than I was then!) I'd like to think that my "feedback" was part of a dialogue that helped generate ideas (or at least inform the work of the writers and editors) down the line--even if that dialogue took place "offline" and was not visible to an audience. I love the way ideas can be worked out in online forums; it's just not one of the main functions of a newspaper. I guess I'm just saying that the forum-newspaper comparison can be problematic.

happy_stomach wrote:David, I agree with you on all of your points. I would argue however for a more precise, forum-specific definition of "feedback loop." I was kind of a weird kid and growing up, starting in junior high, I think, wrote a lot of long letters to the editor to newspapers and magazines. Probably because my writing was SO naive, I often received prompt, lengthy responses (to set me straight). (Not hard news or criticism, but one of the most memorable responses I received was via telephone from Randy Cohen, aka The Ethicist. I will remember that conversation for the rest of my life.) Some of my letters were published, the majority were not, but (perhaps because I'm really not much less naive now than I was then!) I'd like to think that my "feedback" was part of a dialogue that helped generate ideas (or at least inform the work of the writers and editors) down the line--even if that dialogue took place "offline" and was not visible to an audience. I love the way ideas can be worked out in online forums; it's just not one of the main functions of a newspaper. I guess I'm just saying that the forum-newspaper comparison can be problematic.

Sure, letters to the editor are definitely a kind of feedback. Your exceptional letters generated a response, but my guess is that most letters to those newspaper writers and editors did not get that kind of feedback, could not get that kind of feedback because there's just not enough hours in the day to respond to everyone. On a forum, however, it's usual that every post gets at least one response.

The key point of comparison that I'm making between online forums and newspapers is that both are sources for information (in our case, about food). One key difference, as you note, is that forums enable ideas to be "worked out" in a way that is not usually possible in a print format that gets letters from readers.

In addition, forums provide for an immediacy (you post; I respond immediately) that is, again, logisitically impossible in a print format.

I'm not to arguing that online forums are superior to print, but I am trying to isolate the unique strengths of each type of media.

Cathy2 wrote:Except you're the author, too!

Aww shucks! Thanks!

However, that does point up another important benefit to this forum: Accessibility. Not everybody gets their letter published in a newspaper- even really good letters, but anybody with anything pertinent to say about food can post.

Add to this, "and LTHForum.com isn't one of the sh**ty reviewers who write for the Chicago papers." Seriously, Chicago has the worst food writing for major professional media I've ever seen.

I used to write (very occasionally) learned, lengthy letters to the editor. (The Trib, specifically.) Never got published.

Then I started writing short, somewhat clever and glib, also somewhat simplistic letters saying something the cynical wiseacre at the local bar would say. Those had about a 75% success rate. The press doesn't like it when us citizens are actually more learned than them, but they love it when you're kind of (but not too) smart, and funny in a Regular Guy way.

Of course, like blackjack, once I knew the secret of winning, the game lost its interest.