Comments on: Food Writers Guild talk on Blogging

By: realfoodlover

realfoodlover — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:44:50 +0000

This was very entertaining – both the review of the talk and the comments. I am a member of the Guild of Food Writers – I can dig what you are saying about the stunned silence greeting the idea of writing for nothing. Wherever writers gather, money is discussed – it’s because we are so impoverished. I totally identify with compromise in exchange for wages. I write my food blog because I need a form of expression where I am free to be me. It’s also my calling card.

By: Marina O'Loughlin

Marina O'Loughlin — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:33:03 +0000

this was pointed out to me – possibly the source of the new rumour going around town that i’m a figment of metro’s imagination, cobbled together from a pool of staff writers.

so much for my distinctive style…

i’d just like to reassure everyone that, despite my increasing girth, there’s really only one of me. other metro’s nationwide have their own restaurant reviewers, but they are bylined with their own names. the lady in question probably meant northern counterpart. i hope.

so it’s goodbye from me and me and her over there. mx

By: gloucesteroldspot

gloucesteroldspot — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:59:16 +0000

Thanks for the tip eyedropper its:

http://www.gloucesteroldspot.wordpress.com

GOS

By: eyedropper

eyedropper — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:06:15 +0000

You should have put a link to your blog in that comment Gloucester old spot!

By: gloucesteroldspot

gloucesteroldspot — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:13:50 +0000

I was at the GFW blogging meeting, I am a member, I thought it was great and a very interesting evening. I started my own blog 3 days later!! Anthony has very kindly given me advice and support.

Though I am a GFW member, being a professional cook/teacher/demonstrator is my main occupation, I just happen to have written 2 books, plus various spin-offs.

I am passionate about all food and eating, and have a deep knowledge having spent most of my life IN the kitchen.

I just like writing about it, I want to put my thoughts “out there” and hopefully someone will read them. As yet I have not said anything very controversial, but I will. I am very opinionated!!!

Unfortunately I am a bad speller. GOS

By: John Whiting

John Whiting — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 22:39:56 +0000

There are some very good writers about food, but they are not spending most of their time in restaurants, or even in kitchens for that matter; they are writing about how our methods of food production have become an integral part of the human race’s ecological suicide. Some of the best are not even food writers as such. For instance, Gwynne Dyer, a military historian, wrote a brilliant summary of the accellerating food crisis in an article for the New Zealand Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10450519&pnum=0

By: LSF

LSF — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 17:46:58 +0000

As I said, John, nobody is forced to earn a living from food writing. If you’re unhappy with what you have to do to get paid, then you can choose to take up another job and write as a so-called ‘amateur’.

I assume that when you say the serious writers you know run websites you mean they run non-blog websites. After, a blog *is* a website.

I took a look at some of the websites you mentioned that belong to members of the guild of food writers and most a boring, out-dated brochureware websites that very poorly demonstrate the writer’s alleged skills.

By: John Whiting

John Whiting — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:26:53 +0000

My reservations about blogs relate to their suitability as a medium for displaying one’s off-line talents–for selling one’s self, in other words. Serious writers that I know maintain web sites rather than blogs (although they may also have the latter). But as a means of conveying information rapidly, blogs are invaluable. Some of the best political writing is in blogs maintained by serious academics, political scientists and activists. But for organizing forces on behalf of campaigns, the bloggers go back to the web site format. (All this is quite aside from the blog-as-ego-trip, which is the black hole that most of them fall into.)

By: eyedropper

eyedropper — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:36:23 +0000

Hi John. I think the greatest strength of blogging is what we’re doing here. Having the debate ‘underneath’ the catalyst for that debate, as well as linking to Silverbrow and back, and forming connections and opinions.

To focus soley on the quality of the writing is to miss some of these points. Good blogs, and there are many, are like digital dim-sum, bad blogs, and there are many more, are like digital doo doo.

It’s not just in the tiny world of food writing that these changes are taking place, it’s every medium (images, words, video) across every subject.

This is worth a read
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wethemedia/#top

By: John Whiting

John Whiting — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:53:07 +0000

“As with most matters: if it’s false it will fail.” If only. The most successful people I’ve known have been those who faked it so assiduously that they even came to believe in themselves, at least for the duration of their careers. Then, having exhausted the possibilities of sham, they retired to make a nest egg from writing the autobiography that told it like it *really* was.