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The Big Time Chef In The Age Of Citizen Journalism
Eater, a top NYC based food blog, has a guest column written by Mario Batali, titled Why I Hate Food Bloggers By Mario Batali #01 (as in there's more to come?).
I think we can all agree that besides being an amazing chef, Mario is media savvy. He knows how to use the media to get and keep the attention on him and his restaurants.
And so he's taken to guest blogging on a popular food blog and his topic is the irresponsible journalism that is allowed to exist on blogs but would never be tolerated by traditional media.
He nails home his point with a great rant on the incorrect and unfair characterization of the lease fight between him and his partners and the landlord at Del Posto. The blogs got it wrong and the misinformation propagated. Happens all day long in the blogs. What about the screwup that Engadget had on the iPhone that took a billion of market cap out of Apple stock in a single day?
But look beyond Mario's post. He's validating the very medium he's critizing. A guest post on Eater by Mario Batali makes Eater bigger, will bring more readers, lets everyone know that Eater matters.
And Mario knows that too. But anyone who pays attention can see that blogs and review sites are gaining importance in the restaurant market. Dealing with user generated content is the reality of being a restaurant owner.
So Mario's validating and critiquing at the same time. He's in the conversation. Smart.
Comments (9) | Posted June 14, 2007 in NYC , Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
Yes, the Internet flattens and links the world. We're all equal in the eyes of Google. So rants or raves will get equal attention. Since bad news travels faster than good news, if you really want to get attention, then rants are probably the way to go.
Of course some of us don't like to go look at train-wrecks, so we won't be there. But there will always be lots who do.
Posted by: Barry Welford | Jun 14, 2007 7:54:02 AM
I say, good for him to speak directly to the audience (ie customers).
Does this mean a new Mario action figure, this time with a keyboard and kung-fu blogging grip?
Posted by: Michael | Jun 14, 2007 10:20:56 AM
I thought food blogs were about food. What this whole thing is really about is the cult of celebrity worship that has gripped our culture.
Food is dead, long live food.
Posted by: jackson | Jun 14, 2007 10:22:14 AM
Mario Batali is not alone; it appears that using blogs to criticize blogs is the latest PR trend. There's a great example at Encyclopedia Britannica's new forum here
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2007/06/web-20-the-sleep-of-reason-part-i/. (Thanks to Clay Shirky at Many to Many for the reference.) Michael Gorman’s guest post uses the Britannica blog to directly and indirectly criticize blogs, Web 2.0, Wikipedia and the breakdown of authority in general. I agree that using the medium to criticism the medium is ironic but clever.
Posted by: Lyndar | Jun 14, 2007 10:28:54 AM
Whoops. How do you correct a typo in comments? I meant to say "I agree that using the medium to critcize the medium is ironic but clever."
Posted by: Lyndar | Jun 14, 2007 10:36:36 AM
The established hierarchy doesn't like anything that disrupts its order. Well, obviously.
Blogs tend to have faster decision cycles and get the right information out there as soon as it's available. Since they're much less concerned with "face" their corrections have just as much prominence as their mistaken early articles, while the hostile MSM ensures that everyone hears about how they screwed up. Unfortuantely for the MSM, it is much more concerned with face, buries its corrections, and no one with an equivalent voice is holding them to account (sure the blogs do, but they get much less attention than the MSM).
For restaurants, this breakdown makes it harder to build and keep a reputation. Good intelligence work on the important critics, PR spending for Page 6 type mentions, and coddling certain high profile customers isn't enough. You've got to produce superlative service at a 6-sigma level because you never know (except for ridiculous camera usage) who is going to make a media event out of their experience. So the current celebrity chef restaurant model is threatened just as much as the current music model because they rely on similar restrictions of the pre-web world.
Posted by: Bulging Bracket | Jun 14, 2007 1:06:44 PM
The article is nothing more than a carefully calculated ploy to drum up some publicity - nothing different than standard Batali MO. He doesn't really talk about "bloggers" - just one example that deals w/ his lease "controversy." But he knows a "I hate bloggers" tagline will get people talking about him.
I'm curious to see #2. While Batali might be a great chef *when* he's cooking for you, his restaurants are generally less than stellar. His restaurants are not serious about food - they are merely serious about image (and maximum profits.) This isn't to say you can't have a good meal there; but they are nowhere near the nation's (or world's) best. And often, as bloggers will attest, the food is ridiculously over-priced and extremely inconsistent.
He and his buddy Bourdain have the food media world, offline and on, wrapped around their fingers.
Posted by: ChuckEats | Jun 14, 2007 1:42:39 PM
I'm with Jackson on this one.
food gets the same sort of ratings that music does that are muddled and confusing. it likens itself to the various ways that investment firms rate companies..
Posted by: kip | Jun 14, 2007 1:55:22 PM
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