Chicago Sun-Times Food Section Now Produced by Advertising Department

When the editor tells the "food writer" to not give any review score lower than a B, it leaves no doubt they're nothing more than ass-kissers.

 

What papers do you read?

 

If you know your paper sucks, why read/support it?

If they want to put out a bad paper, that's on them, but if you read/support it, that's on you.

And, the thing is, a food section and/or a restaurant reviewer can be a good read in a paper.

Too many bloggers are up the ass of the local restauranteurs and chefs. They want free meals, and want to get invited to openings and pre-openings. So, there's very little objective reporting.

But, where they do beat newspapers in the volume of reporting. They have more space, and can report on every opening and closing. They run interviews with chef and owners, and they report on movement within the industry.

Meanwhile, newspapers dedicate a small space to the industry, and it's usually taken up with a review. I'd give the restaurant writer/critic more space.

 

I don't.

I read Richmond Magazine for recommended places to eat and I use Yelp.

 

You should read Michael Bauer from my sheet. He will shred a restaurant and rarely gives any eatery more than 2.5 stars out of four. In a city such as San Francisco (or Chicago or New York) people take food very seriously. If my paper ever let our food section become a shill for the industry, people would howl.

 

And sadly I think you are the exception rather than the norm.

The only way I can justify a middle ground for this would be for a writer to preview a restaurant first and only write about them if he or she feels they are worth writing about. If it sucks, they never see the printed page.

 

I can't think of a paper in a major city where what you say is true, or the norm. (For the sake of the argument, let's call a "major city" one that has pro sports teams in at least two of the 4 major pro sports leagues in the US. And, I only say two because I have no idea what Oklahoma City or Green Bay's papers are like.)

There are tons of cheerleaders writing about restaurants, but if one of them works for a big city paper, I'd like to know who he/she is.