Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Will Blog for Food









Nakiya @ Taste of Baltimore said...

Ugh, I can't believe there are bloggers that contact restaurants for free food...that just sounds so entitled.

Beth said...

I think I probably came off a little harsh in my post on D@L. I don't have a problem with reviewers taking free meals, as long as they disclose they are free, and offer an honest opinion. My point in talking about my surprise at getting those free meal solicitations was that I don't even review restaurants, so I'm not sure why I'm on those lists.

People taking free stuff and then not being honest when they review is a pet peeve of mine. I review products for a large online retailer. I get the stuff for free, but if I hate something I say it, and the website clearly identifies what reviews are done by people who get the stuff for free. I think it's the only way for people to know the view might be skewed.

theminx said...

When I commented on the post, I said I was sure that none of MY blogger friends do such a thing. I just can't imagine having the balls to do that.

theminx said...

Beth - I understood your POV completely. You just sounded incredulous that as someone who never writes about restaurants why you would still get invites. It matches my incredulity that I *do* write about restaurants yet am always excluded. (Sometimes I think I'm secretly blacklisted.)

diningdish said...

I've been following the post about the bloggers and free food. Go back five years when people read newspapers and there were more around. All print media is in trouble. The bloggers are the new source of news in any specific category. Not only our blog posts, but our tweets, Facebook coverage...it is the new media.

Whether we have the credentials to write on the subject is never questioned though for some it should. I respect you Minx, Nakiya, Beth and others in our crowd but I cringe at the few who are greedy with hands outstretched for the free meal for a column post and don't even bother to tip the servers and rarely mention the meal was comp'd.

theminx said...

Dara - I see where bloggers' credentials are questioned fairly frequently, but never have I seen mentioned what exactly should these credentials entail. I even posed this question to the D@L gang and nobody bothered to answer. A blog is a personal thing, we work for ourselves. "Credentials" is a meaningless term. It's even become fairly meaningless for mainstream journalism. Take Jayson Blair, for example - as a writer for the NYT, he presumably had credentials. And he was a plagiarist.

People who read blogs, such as D@L, yet dismiss bloggers, are hypocrites.

diningdish said...

When I say credentials, just because you post something on the blog doesn't mean anyone reads it. We all have analytics on our pages.

When a blogger asks a restaurant for a free meal for a column post it behooves the restaurateur to check out what the person is writing and to get their stats. Does it make sense to comp a meal to someone who gets 20 hits a day if that much and who are those 20 hits. That is what I meant and maybe the word should have been analytics rather than credentials.

theminx said...

I see what you're saying, Dara. Makes sense to know the scope of one's audience!