Dear Ladies:

I agree with you when you say, "more and more people in the culinary world believe that food bloggers—as a group—are unfair, highly critical, untrained and power hungry individuals empowered by anonymity." And it's not just food bloggers, many in the culinary world believe that anyone who writes about food on the Internet fits this description. Any rational human being spends about, oh, 15 seconds on Yelp! could reasonably conclude that the culinary world has a point.

However, having previously offered comments on your specific proposals, I now rise in opposition to your endeavor and, by extension, to similar endeavors, in fact, to the very concept of a code of ethics and codified review guidelines for food bloggers. My opposition stem from the following:

1) I am very suspicious of exclusionary codes and standards.

When exclusionary codes and standards are promulgated, one of two things, both bad, tends to happen.

The first likely outcome is the emergence of an illegitimately protected class. I agree wholeheartedly with Tim Hayward of The Guardian when he said,

What we now regard as professions, the law, medicine, banking etc, all began when groups of interested parties set behavioral codes that excluded others in the name of 'maintaining standards'.

Extending Hayward's remarks to the food world, we see examples such as Germany's Reinheitsgebot and the European Union's recent recognition of Pizza Napolitana as a regional specialty.

What all of these efforts have in common is the desire to protect a privileged elite against competition. In the process, both prospective entrepreneurs and consumers are harmed.

The second likely outcome is that standards will become so dumbed-down that anyone can meet them. This happens when a powerful interest group is threatened with exclusion. Witness, for example, the controversy over government-sponsored organic certification.


2) Methinks the culinary world doth protest too much.

Just because the culinary world believes "that food bloggers—as a group—are unfair, highly critical, untrained and power hungry individuals empowered by anonymity" does not make it so. In fact, these objections sound suspiciously similar to the objections that restaurateurs such as Dennis Berkowitz (I get a perverse sense of pleasure that this link is to Yelp!) and Alex Plotkin raise when they believe that their businesses have been unfairly criticized by highly trained journalists, a.k.a., newspaper food critics who presumably adhere to an even higher standard than your propose for bloggers. (I can't speak to Plotkin's establishment but Berkowitz deserves every once of scorn that's been heaped upon his Max's empire.)

It's silly to think that any one food blogger can ruin a restaurant's business. It's equally silly to believe that blog readers are so stupid that they don't know that blogs represent opinions on an inherently subjective subject. And, if there's a consistently negative opinion about an establishment across the food blogosphere, perhaps said establishment needs to look in the mirror rather than blame the bloggers. Just because bloggers are "untrained" doesn't mean they're wrong when they say, "This place sucks" and proceed to tell you why they think so.


3) I want to banish blogosphere blanding.

You obviously pride yourselves in being trained journalists. Pity. In case you haven't noticed, traditional journalism is dying, none too soon IMO. There are many reasons for this state of affairs, including the inability of newspapers to monetize online editions and strident denials of bias where bias obviously exists, not to mention out-and-out scandals such as the affairs Blair and Cooke.

I believe there is another force at work, one that is less-frequently mentioned — traditional journalistic writing, at least as it is practiced in the United States, is downright boring. I got my first real clue about this in the 1980s when I visited Hong Kong. While there, I read an English-language review (by an obviously English reviewer) of a Sheena Easton concert. The review panned Easton's performance, noting that singer had performed a dance routine that must have taken "literally minutes to perfect." Oh, that we could see even that the slightest hint of such drool humor from an American journalist! If American journalists would even adopt the style guide of the relatively straight-laced Economist, it would cause an immediate improvement in the readability of their prose.

This makes me concerned that any attempt to establish "journalistic" standards among bloggers will necessarily turn the blogosphere into the blandosphere. I greatly perfer Michael Bauer's blog to his reviews precisely because he eschews the restaurant critic style of writing in his blog. And, one person's "unfair, highly critical" review by an "untrained and power hungry individual" may well be viewed by another person as well-informed, biting satire. Subjects of satire rarely appreciate it but, if the criticism is warranted, who cares?

Admittedly, I have some skin in this particular game — I blog anonymously and my blog persona can be cutting, sarcastic and ranting. But, I dare to you point out an instance where what I say has been uninformed or unfair, my exaggerations for entertainment purposes notwithstanding.


4) We don't need no stinkin' badges.

I find your statement...

By creating a food blogger code of ethics, we hope to draw attention to the food bloggers who hold themselves to higher standards.

...to be highly offensive. Your code of ethics may promote different standards but they are by no means higher.

Were I to qualify for a "badge" or otherwise be entitled to advertise adherence to a code, I would not do so because I would not want to discriminate against other blogger who were similarly ethical but who held themselves to a different code.

Were I to not qualify for such a badge, I would object to the exclusion on the grounds the effort is simply an thinly-veiled attempt to place at a competitive disadvantage excellent, ethical bloggers, who (like me, thank God!) have not been journalistically trained or who lack the resources needed to adhere to the sections of the code that require the blogger to spend substantial amounts of money. (Whew! That was a long sentence.)


5) I think that Outback's tagline applies to blogging: no rules, just right.

If we were to adopt a code of ethics, I think that eGullet's proposal is more appropriate than yours. But is a code really necessary?

Again, The Guardian's Hayward nails it, writing, "there are no rules except 'be entertaining or informative'." If you can do both at the same time, you've really hit the jackpot.

But no rules is not the same as saying that anything goes. I believe that, by simply employing common decency and common sense, bloggers can do the right thing without a written set of rules. I also believe that blog readers are smart enough to censure bloggers who behave badly.

Let me give you a personal example of ethical behavior that did not require a rulebook and, in fact, involved a situation that is not contemplated by any of the proposed codes. Last year, I wrote a scathing but accurate review of a local restaurant. My food was great but Mackie's was terrible (I tasted it and concurred) and the service was awful. Shortly after posting the review, I struck up a conversation with a woman in a bar. It turned out that she lived in the neighborhood where the restaurant was located and knew the establishment, having been an occasional patron. She informed me that the restaurant's owner had been ill for some time with a serious ailment that doctors had not been able to diagnose. As a result, my negative experience was likely due to the owner not being able to pay sufficient attention to the business because of the illness. I initially thought about adding a note about the owner's health to my review but I decided that it wasn't my place to broadcast a health-related rumor across the Internet. So, I simply, and quickly, removed the post from my blog. No rule said to do it. No one told me to do it. I did it because it was the right thing to do, because I don't believe in kicking someone who I know is down. I don't think I'm special in this regard. I have enough faith in humanity, Yelpers notwithstanding, to believe that most people will do the right thing in most situations.


Ladies, I know you've expended mucho time and energy on this effort but I suggest that you drop it. I don't think that much good can come of it but much harm can.

That said, I applaud your efforts to improve food blogging. I just disagree with your means. Here's a suggestion: use the time you've been devoting to the code to start a web site that skewers the most egregious posts by food bloggers. It'll have the effect you want. And, it will be a lot more fun to write and to read.

Ethically yours,
Grumpy