Trixie-pea & Pigmon get ink?

While discussing the difficulty a food writer has saying something new and fresh on a topic, Bourdain gives the following as one of his worse cases:

Worse, while your editor has just asked for an overview of "Quens ethnic" in a week, some lonely food nerd has been methodically eating his way, block by block, across the entire borough and blogging about it for years. Medium Raw, p. 164

I can't see how this can be anything other than a thinly-disguised (obviously, T-P and Pigmon are not "lonely food nerd[s]") reference to this exhaustive block by block review of the entire borough.

Kudos to our intrepid pair! esp. as they helped Sonoma Howie and me have a wonderful time in the borough.

Geo

Hi,

Not to take anything away from TP and Pigmon. If they lived in Queens, I'd believe you found your pair. I thought their trip to Queens derived from reading blogs and other resources of people who live in the region who could conveniently document the area. They did great preplanning research to optimize their experience. Their information on LTH certainly gave me interest in going to Queens, which I never had before.

Worse, while your editor has just asked for an overview of "Quens ethnic" in a week, some lonely food nerd has been methodically eating his way, block by block, across the entire borough and blogging about it for years. Medium Raw, p. 164

What irks me is the food writer who will use this wonderful intelligence report offered to them gratis, then completely fail to offer any attribution.

Regards,

"Lonely food nerd"?

Bourdain sank in my estimation with that pointless snark.

David Hammond wrote:"Lonely food nerd"?

Bourdain sank in my estimation with that pointless snark.

Really? "Lonely food nerd" got you?

Seems to me that this sort of "pointless snark" has been Bourdain's stock-in-trade for at least as long as he's been doing TV. Subtract the snark from his schtick and there's little left.

--Rich

RAB wrote:Seems to me that this sort of "pointless snark" has been Bourdain's stock-in-trade for at least as long as he's been doing TV. Subtract the snark from his schtick and there's little left.

I think this may be true for his written word, which isn't quite as exciting or interesting as it used to be. But No Reservations is filled with a rich and sincere appreciation for many aspects of the destinations he visits. As a traveler, he seems like a genuine guest who's eager to experience and share.

As for this specific passage, to me, it seemed more like hyperbole for the purpose of making a point than anything else -- just a way of trying to show how hard professional food writing is due to the unending dedication -- and considerable skills -- of obsessive amateurs.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:As for this specific passage, to me, it seemed more like hyperbole for the purpose of making a point than anything else -- just a way of trying to show how hard professional food writing is due to the unending dedication -- and considerable skills -- of obsessive amateurs.

=R=

That's exactly what it is.

I would encourage people to read the book. It really is quite entertaining, and like I said, there's quite a bit of self-deprecation in the book.

RAB wrote:

David Hammond wrote:"Lonely food nerd"?

Bourdain sank in my estimation with that pointless snark.

Really? "Lonely food nerd" got you?

Yes, it did, only because I have such regard for this food adventurer so demeaned. I've read several of Bourdain's books, I watch his shows, but this line pissed me off (though, of course, I'll continue to read and watch).

ronnie_suburban wrote:I think this may be true for his written word, which isn't quite as exciting or interesting as it used to be. But No Reservations is filled with a rich and sincere appreciation for many aspects of the destinations he visits. As a traveler, he seems like a genuine guest who's eager to experience and share.

I don't disagree. I appreciate what he does in No Reservations, and, for that matter, what he did in A Cook's Tour. Enough so that Ronna and I have gone our of our way to eat pig at two of the top three spots in his Hierarchy of Pork. (Lechon in Puerto Rico and Babi Guling in Indonesia. Both totally worth it, by the way.)

ronnie_suburban wrote:As for this specific passage, to me, it seemed more like hyperbole for the purpose of making a point than anything else...

He called them "lonely food nerds." Hyperbole? Sure. Snarky hyperbole though. After all, he could have said "superhero food nerds."

David Hammond wrote:Yes, it did, only because I have such regard for this food adventurer so demeaned. I've read several of Bourdain's books, I watch his shows, but this line pissed me off (though, of course, I'll continue to read and watch).

Again, really? If "lonely food nerds" pissed you off, you surely must have missed it when he described a group of your friends as "online food enthusiasts shoveling their fourth and fifth flagstone-sized portions down their magnificently nerdly gullets."

My point is simply that it seems a little late in the game to bash Bourdain for his trademark snark.

--Rich

RAB wrote:Subtract the snark from his schtick and there's little left.

RAB wrote:My point is simply that it seems a little late in the game to bash Bourdain for his trademark snark.

The first quote above is probably the most damning bash of this thread, but just to be clear, and really there's no point hammering this any more, I'm offended (not terribly, not terminally) by his (likely) characterization of a friend of mine. In no sense am I (for one) bashing Bourdain or anyone else.

And that is all I've got to say about that.

David Hammond wrote:And that is all I've got to say about that.

Cool, we all like Tony B., even though he (slightly) offends us sometimes. I certainly didn't intend to hammer (or bash) you (or anyone). Mea culpa.
--Rich

RAB wrote:My point is simply that it seems a little late in the game to bash Bourdain for his trademark snark.

Yeah, ultimately it's hard to disagree with this. He pretty much built his brand on it. But I do think that as he becomes more of a tv star and less of a writer there's a lot more to him than just snark, which is the point to which I was responding.

Perhaps this particular instance hits home a bit more than others (for some of us) because it seems to be directed at people we actually know. Of course, as you said, one of the other snarky Bourdain quotes you cited above:

". . . online food enthusiasts shoveling their fourth and fifth flagstone-sized portions down their magnificently nerdly gullets."

was directed right at me and no one seemed to care a lick about that one!

=R=

HI,

While you are all taken by the phrase 'food nerd.' I wish there had been attribution to whomever he was referring to.

I sat in on a program of NYC food critics who started to comment on blogs and posters they followed for ideas. Everything was amusing reverie until I inquired if they offered attribution to these sources. I was immediately the unwelcome guest in the room.

Now use their sources without attribution and you have crossed an ethical barrier. It really is a, "Do as I say, not as I do," issue.

Years ago when Matsumoto had its meteoric rise and sudden closure. There were many, many articles generated on it with veiled attributions of internet buzz and other vague comments. Exactly one media critic offered specific sources to how the buzz was generated.

Regards,

C2 wrote:Now use their sources without attribution and you have crossed an ethical barrier. It really is a, "Do as I say, not as I do," issue.

I think C2 really nails this, cold. What we do, and publish, out of passion, well, WTH, that's free for the taking. But what *they* do, and publish, out of employment, well, sorrr-eee, let's have the proper attribution, eh?!

Bourdain, here and in other places in the book, clearly alludes to a kind of symbiotic relationship between the pros and the apassionatas; unfortunately, the relationship sometimes —as here— looks more parasitic than it does symbiotic.

Geo

While I agree completely with the spirit of what Cathy2 says, and I wish LTH Forum and/or individual posters got more attribution in the mainstream press, keep in mind that the press has a long standing tradition (and legal right) to not reveal their sources.

Is that how that works? I thought the reveal sources thing was to protect the sources, not to cover the newspapers for using someone else's work.

That being said, we all post here publicly under screen names, without demanding attribution (say, with a by-line or a creative commons licens) who's to say when an idea came from us or when it came from someone on the street who read LTH? While I agree that attribution would be nice, I wonder if our expectations of that are a bit high - I, myself, can't remember if the latest good idea I had came from LTH or from an actual conversation I had with somebody.

When I blog a riff on someone else's idea or recipe, I try very hard to attribute it to them, but there comes a point where the trackback is impossible (I once traced a recipe back through three different blogs I read: I wound up attributing all of them, but at some point, who's recipe was it?) I know it's legal to use somebody else's collection of ingredients, etc, etc, but I do try to be courteous as much as possible - but it comes down to feasibility.

Mhays wrote:Is that how that works? I thought the reveal sources thing was to protect the sources, not to cover the newspapers for using someone else's work.

Well certainly that's the spirit of the law, but it's a double edged sword. Of course, getting an idea from an online source such as LTH Forum and using it as a basis for an article is one thing. Outright plagiarism is another. I don't think we're talking about any writers/journalists using someone's post verbatim without attribution, are we?

While I agree that attribution would be nice, I wonder if our expectations of that are a bit high

HI,

I know of non-journalists who are researchers who have grabbed an idea, inflated its potential and claimed it as their own. All the while, it was someone else who did the fundamental research. Sometimes these things boil down to intellectual honesty and a matter of character.

Regards,

Steve, you know the issue of whether a reporter has a 1st amendment right to shield his or her source is rather murky, generally falling against the reporter when push comes to shove (cf, Libby, Scooter/Miller, Judith). That said, copyright rather trumps. Thing is, attribution rarely amounts to outright plagiarism.

I do think the issue Cathy2 gets at is the failure to treat Internet Fora as media. Rather, this all is generally viewed as people talking (so to speak) and thus open to eavesdropping. And the minute someone turns their posts into "blog" there are media types that will confer new respectability. Not to speak for MikeG, but I bet he would agree with that (especially true for Mike too as many of his blog posts are cross-posted here).

As a blogger who works in both old and new media, I have to agree with Mhays. Sometimes it's easy to attribute a tip. Sometimes it's impossible. By the time you see something in half a dozen places and hear about it from a variety of other sources, all you know is that there's "buzz." Maybe you can find out who had it first; maybe not.

Somewhere way back there was discussion here about how nobody really "discovers" restaurants. Just because you were the first person to write about a place on LTHForum does not mean that nobody else knew about the place. Even in the case of Matsumoto, I suspect that quite a few people in the Japanese community heard of it before we did. (For that matter, Cathy2, if you're going to gripe about "veiled attributions" why then leave uncredited the "one media critic (who) offered specific sources"? See, it's not so easy, is it?)

VI, bloggers as well as forum participants all complain that traditional news media "steal ideas" from them. Meanwhile, old media types complain that bloggers and forums quote news stories and divert traffic without contributing any added value.

But really this kind of thing all dates back to way before the internet. Big newspapers always got story ideas from little newspapers and broadcast took ideas from print media and vice versa -- each putting their own spin on it.

I wish I had a nickle for every time versions of stories that first broke in the weekly newspapers I used to work for later appeared, with the same sources, in the Trib or Sun-Times. They weren't plagiarizing -- they did their own reporting -- but we knew they would never have known about the incident or source if we hadn't covered it first. Occasionally, we got an "As reported in Lerner Newspapers" plug, but not often. And I'd be lying if I said that we never took stories from the dailies and re-reported them from our hyper-local angle.

That's journalism as usual, and one reason why "scooping" the competition has always been a prime goal.

What's different is that now there are all these new players who believe that once they put their "intelligence" out in the public eye, they still have some sort of claim on the very concept. That's a kind of Ivory Tower way of looking at it, but it doesn't fly in the news biz. If you're writing a dissertation, you put a long list of footnotes at the end, referencing every single source you drew your notions from. Nobody has room for that in an 8-inch news story.

And how many "hat tip to Tom's Blog via Dick's Forum from a Tweet by Harry" laundry lists can anyone stand to read, anyway?

Although I agree with LAZ's general point that "discoveries" aren't as frequent as we'd like to think they are (Nick of Grub Street says he regularly gets emails from bloggers complaining he stole their idea and has to respond "I got the same press release 15 minutes ago you did"), in the case of Matsumoto, the issue wasn't that we discovered the restaurant (Heather Shouse from Time Out went, with Erik M., before anyone else here) but that a lot of the legwork and intel published in the early posts was then picked up in a print piece with only a backhanded reference to "internet food sites." In that case, I agree completely with those who think that was rather graceless, and we bitched and, to its credit, the "non-internet food publication" involved started giving credit more often where credit was due (and, indeed, started treating LTHers as potential freelancers rather than eccentrics).

A "discovery" is nothing much in itself, but legwork is research and the functional equivalent of a story anywhere else when it's solidly put together, and if you spin something you found online into a couple of paragraphs in a piece you're getting paid for, the least you can do is tip your hat.

Hi,

For whatever it matters, Matsumoto was days old. Heather and Erik went based on my information, though Erik wasn't too pleased I commented the media ball had now begun to roll.

As for the lone person who did offer attribution, I am never quite sure whether to use a real name or a screen name. I knew there would be something cute stated once you saw it.

However I have seen several people get on their really high horse when they are paid for their efforts and someone uses their information.

if you spin something you found online into a couple of paragraphs in a piece you're getting paid for, the least you can do is tip your hat

Agreed.

Regards,

LAZ wrote:Somewhere way back there was discussion here about how nobody really "discovers" restaurants. Just because you were the first person to write about a place on LTHForum does not mean that nobody else knew about the place. Even in the case of Matsumoto, I suspect that quite a few people in the Japanese community heard of it before we did.

Agree with the statement, yet it's beside the point of this discourse. Public places are essentially knowable, true. But this board has a long history of introducing restaurants, both old and new, to "media" as broadly as you'd like to define that term. Because of the Internets, you can pretty easily know precisely who first introduced Matsumoto into the blood stream of media and when that happened. Scads of people from the Chinese ex-pat community in the western burbs might have known about Katy's, to use an example close to my heart. But I'm telling you, it did not exist in English-written media before LTH, despite churning out noodles for a few years in (gringo) anonymity. Many now well-known examples have emerged from this board.

The joys of this site and other media outlets like it are limited to 2 things for me: great discoveries and great writing. The best bits combine both, most have neither.

JeffB wrote:The joys of this site and other media outlets like it are limited to 2 things for me: great discoveries and great writing. The best bits combine both, most have neither.

Agreed. And whatever work we get done here pales in comparison to what the restaurateurs do to keep their doors open and their customers happy. Vive le restaurant et la table.

JeffB wrote: But this board has a long history of introducing restaurants, both old and new, to "media" as broadly as you'd like to define that term. Because of the Internets, you can pretty easily know precisely who first introduced Matsumoto into the blood stream of media and when that happened. Scads of people from the Chinese ex-pat community in the western burbs might have known about Katy's, to use an example close to my heart. But I'm telling you, it did not exist in English-written media before LTH, despite churning out noodles for a few years in (gringo) anonymity.

Yes and no. You should not assume that because word of a place come online first through LTH or somebody's blog no one in the regular media knew about it beforehand. The timing of this board and the deadlines of (especially) traditional media are not in sync. You can go to a brand-new restaurant tomorrow and have an account of it, with photos, up on LTH within hours.

One of the publications I write for still has a policy of not reviewing restaurants until they've been open two months. Sure, they might put a line or two about an opening in a business column somewhere before that, but I doubt anyone here would see it. And I can tell you that I have on more than one occasion had a piece written, turned in, photographed and slotted ... but weeks away from print ... when the first word of the joint appeared online. Them's the breaks.

Even if the restaurant has been around awhile, like Katy's, sometimes it takes a little buzz going around for a writer to be able to convince editors that a place -- especially the kind of obscure, hole-in-the-wall places that LTHers so delight in -- is worth some ink. Then, too, professionals have their secret spots, places they hesitate to turn a media spotlight on, or are holding back for one reason or another.

I don't mean to deny credit where it's due -- LTHers provide loads of detail about lots of restaurants that totally escape traditional media, and often go way beyond what a newspaper ever could -- but it seems overly harsh to accuse overworked reporters of a lack of ethics because they lack time the time to track down the earliest mentions or the space to attribute them all.

I do agree that media should do its own legwork and not merely rehash other people's accounts, attributed or not. Too many writers, both online and in print, seem to do their reporting by concatenating what's trending on Twitter.

Am I the only one disappointed with the content of this thread not matching the title? I was expecting to see some glorious photo-essay of Rob and Trixie's new tattoos, perhaps detailing various food journeys across the Heatland, NYC, and abroad. Truth in advertising, harumph!

Kman wrote:Am I the only one disappointed with the content of this thread not matching the title? I was expecting to see some glorious photo-essay of Rob and Trixie's new tattoos, perhaps detailing various food journeys across the Heatland, NYC, and abroad. Truth in advertising, harumph!

That was exactly what I was expecting.

I just started the damn thing. Then it Went South... and where are Ron and T-P?? Yinz out there? Hello, helloooow...

Geo

Yea, where is Ron?!

I can tell you that nearly every time my iPhone wants to correct my name to Ron

Vital Information wrote:I can tell you that nearly every time my iPhone wants to correct my name to Ron

Makes perfect sense to me.

=R=