PrintThe Difference Between Reviews and Blog Posts
Yesterday I mentioned the story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the influence foodbloggers and food forums such as Yelp are having on the restaurant biz. The crux was, Who are these amateurs and can we trust them? The article mentions the 30-day grace period professional critics often give a new place and the fact that they visit multiple times before turning in their copy.
But what about professional critics who also blog?
The article sparked a discussion about what makes a review a review. One of the foodbloggers mentioned in the article, Sam Breach (Becks & Posh), brings up an interesting point1:
On his blog, Michael Bauer reviews restaurants, especially in other cities, which it seems like he has only eaten at once. I have asked several times in the comments there for him to clarify to his audience whether his blog reviews do or do not meet his own advertised codes of conduct as a reviewer. No information has ever been forthcoming.
I've never given a starred review on this blog; that's not what this is about. Between Meals has an entirely different format, and to me it seems clear that when I post about a local or out-of-town restaurant I'm sharing a first impression; it's not masquerading as a review. With the blog I try to raise issues, listen to readers and bring up areas of mutual interest.
Most of Bauer's readers sounding off in the comments seemed to have no trouble grasping the distinction.
I mention this topic again today because Frank Bruni, the restaurant critic for the New York Times, writes about similar blog vs. review issues on Diner's Journal. There, a reader asks him if he's not tipping his hand to future review subjects by mentioning them on his blog. Bruni replies:
The restaurants I review in the paper most often haven’t been the subjects of early critical appraisals here, though they’ve sometimes been mentioned in posts focusing on particular aspects of the way they operate, certain peculiarities that attended their openings.
There are exceptions, of course, and those exceptions sometimes reflect the special degree of curiosity readers have about certain restaurants that I’m not yet prepared to review but have, in fact, visited, though not as often as I will have by the time I write a review.
Related
The Power of Food Blogging
Becks & Posh Restaurant Review Rules [Becks & Posh]
Food Critic Guidelines [Association of Food Journalists]
How to Evaluate Restaurants [Between Meals]
Frequently Asked Questions [Between Meals]
An Introduction to Diner's Journal [Diner's Journal]
1 The comments section of Breach's entry taking the story to task seems to have been removed. Here's the cached page from Google.
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3 Comments:
The simultaneously great and awful thing about Yelp is the fact that it's written by lots of people with divergent tastes. You almost have to find the personality profile of particular users who have the same tastes as you - I never depend on it for Chinese food recommendations unless I know the reviewer is 1. my friend, or 2. Chinese and grew up with parents who cooked or were in the food industry - something a number of users mention. But I will depend on certain users for food and service advice, because I know their tastes and what they value in food will mirror my tastes as well.
toastykitten at 3:53PM on 03/28/07
Thanks for alerting me to the fact that the comments section of my post had disappeared.
This is freaking me out. Is Big Brother watching? Is someone trying to make me look more stupid than I've been made to look already?
I am the only person who can switch off my comments because I am the only person with access.
I CATEGORICALLY DID NOT switch off my comments.
So how come they were switched off?
Is someone at google playing with me?
I have switched them back on again now.
Thanks for highlighting my Restaurant Review Rules. In their rush to criticise amateur online reviewers and give them a bad rep The Chronicle chose not to publish that important-to-the-investigation information in their article.
Sam Breach at 7:51PM on 03/28/07
@Sam: Cool. I'll link to the comments section then. I thought I was going crazy when trying to follow the threads -- I saw Bauer quoting you but then couldn't find it and then did a cache search for previous revisions of the entry.
@toasty: I have friends trying to get me to Yelp and to post my pizza and burger thoughts there, but I figure I already do it on my pizza/burger sites, so ...
I find Yelp useful mainly for addresses/phone numbers, since it seems to rank really high in Google. I'm still trying to make up my mind about how I feel about wisdom of the crowd, etc. I think your approach in zeroing in on reviewers you've come to trust is a good approach, though. On Yelp or on any message-boarding site.
Adam Kuban at 10:38AM on 03/29/07