Newspaper Food Sections Cutting Jobs; What Can Be Done?
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My friend Michael Bauer, the San Francisco Chronicle executive food and wine editor and restaurant critic, laments the job losses occurring on a regular basis at newspaper food sections around the country.
For Bauer, this issue really hits home for two reasons: his own newspaper—which once had the single largest staff of any newspaper food section in the country—is under intense financial pressure, and many of his friends and colleagues find themselves out of work.
It is indeed a terribly difficult time to be working at newspapers, particularly at the food section. Why?
- Newspaper ad revenues in general, both display and classified, are on a precipitous, perhaps irreversible decline.
- Food sections are often not taken all that seriously at the top of the newspaper editorial food chain, so if staff cuts are necessary, food section staffers are often the first to go.
- Freelance food writers, ever anxious for a respectable by-line and steady work, are plentiful and ready, willing, and able to work for low wages.
- People interested in food can get information about various aspects of the food culture, including recipes, from multiple websites and blogs, in much more timely fashion than once-weekly newspaper food sections can provide.
Let's face it. Blogs and websites have forever changed the way food news, information, and entertainment is disseminated, and I'm afraid there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. We are, as Ruth Reichl once told me, in the middle of an industrial revolution. Where it all shakes out no one knows, but we can be fairly certain newspaper food sections as currently configured have to change and adapt to the new food world order.
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13 Comments:
Who still reads newspapers?
srhcb at 8:37PM on 09/05/08
I still read newspapers. I fall in and out of love with the Washington Post food section. The weekly discussions with the food section writers on the website is a favorite of mine.
MerMade07 at 8:47PM on 09/05/08
It's not just food sections that are feeling the pinch: The New York Times announced today that they're going to consolidate the Metro section into the Main News section Monday through Saturday and Business and Sports into one section Tuesday through Friday.
Raphael at 9:38PM on 09/05/08
This website is one of the reasons.
harstad at 10:31PM on 09/05/08
Newspaper used to be great for washing windows until they switched to some soy-based ink or some such thing.
They also came in handy for wrapping fish, lining bird cages and training puppies.
They can't blame the internet for displacing them in these areas.
srhcb at 10:36PM on 09/05/08
Ruth Reichl's editing of the Los Angeles Times food section was inspired, for my money the best work she ever did. I'll think about that for a bit....
islandexile at 11:09PM on 09/05/08
Just like lots of things most food sections got away from their core--the things I read them closely for: real reviews of local restaurants, food and wine; popular recipes plus a few to broaden my horizons; and food events like our local seafood festival. More and more it assumed the role of arbiter of healthiness and reviews were increasingly becoming comparisons of what the writer thought the food and service should be rather than an objective look at what is was. The celebrity of the chef or owner became more important than what John and Jane Q. Public could expect to find on a visit.
Blogs started to fill this void quickly and effectively. With many to choose between you can find one or more which share your tastes and is most likely to represent you. While I value the knowledge some food writers and editors have, too often I find they promote an agenda on what they believe the local, regional or national (there are some very big egos immortalized in that soy ink) food scene should be.
I have neither the taste buds or pocketbook for haute cuisine; my predilections are rather pedestrian. I welcome the blogs like "A Hamburger Today" and TV shows like "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" that are mindful of the fact a good hamburger place is not an automatic when a patty is slapped onto a griddle or that the art of frying chicken well is both varied and rare. I hope the contributors to these sites become more geographically diverse and continue to develop the richness of the content. (Now if Serious Eats would add a hot dog blog....)
These days I skim the food section only when time permits. The straw for my camel, though, was an article on the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger. I am sorry, but the only carbon I want to read about in a review of cheeseburgers is whether the glorious 80/20 red meat was cooked to medium rare over blazing hunks of carbonized wood (yea!) or with a hydrocarbon gas (not so much yea!).
If you take any newspaper and start to cross out articles not written locally you'll be left with little that escaped the blue pencil save local sports and the social scene and hopefully an article or two in the Wednesday food section with the grocery store flyers tucked inside. As the coverage of local flavor (pun intended) diminishes, so the likelihood of continuing with a food section as we have known in the past does, too.
jscarey at 2:00AM on 09/06/08
As the food section goes, so goes the newspaper, especially if the Times is restructuring as I've read here. I read The Times, Houston Chronicle and Slate and Washington Post online nearly everyday. Chronicle is for hurricane and weather coverage.
My question is not where I'll find information on food and trends and recipes, it's what the local paper will become when the bluebloods can't find photos of themselves on the society pages at the art fundraiser, or photos of precious Constance at the debutante ball? Wait, that blog can make some money! But I'm more interested in food.
tdl1501 at 3:29AM on 09/06/08
I read the NYT and WaPo food sections religiously, on line. I can't put up with all that paper coming into my home, but of course, that means a decline in sales. I suppose the online ads work out ok (much less intrusive on the NYT site than the poorly designed WaPo version), but even before the rise of the web, a newspaper distributor I knew in my hometown said that papers would eventually become obsolete.
Tonecat at 2:47PM on 09/06/08
The ultimate irony--I am a newspaper food writer (actually a political writer who does food on the side) and I just wrote a newspaper column about my favorite food blogs. I started writing for the food section mainly because I was disappointed that there was barely any local content. I have to fight the editor constantly to get across the point that the section should lead with images of FOOD, not cutesy stupid illustrations that come from either iStock or our idiot graphic designer (one recent one included a lot of puke green...on the FOOD front). I rarely use recipes from our food section, and although I have a huge cookbook collection, I find myself cooking most often from ideas and recipes found on blogs and sites like this. So yeah, the question of what is to become of the food sections (just like the rest of the paper) is one we really need to get off our butts and figure out.
bylime at 3:26PM on 09/06/08
The suspense is killing us, bylime. What are your favorite food blogs?
Ed Levine at 4:19PM on 09/06/08
I am a reporter at a small daily newspaper. My beat is education but I write for the food page on the side because it's something that interests me. Last week we lost yet another reporter so instead of writing for the food page, my efforts are now needed on other pages, my editors say.
Newspapers are a sad business to be a part of right now.
awimmer at 9:10PM on 09/07/08
My husband and I read the local paper online but he insists on subscribing to it, only for the papers to pile up, unread, in the recycling bin. His reason -- and I agree -- is that we should pay for what we use. Several times he has written to the newspaper to suggest that they charge for full online access. But they don't get it... yet.
Sooner, rather than later, the old guard of newspaper publishers will figure out that paper and ink is as contemporary as wired telephones, modems and cassette machines.
lkasenter at 12:41AM on 09/08/08