As most of you know, I've been writing for the Rhode Island based environmental news site, ecoRI.org. In today's edition I have 2 feature pieces! I've also started the facebook group, "Stop Bitching about the New Facebook." So if you think that there are things in the world that are more worthy of your ire, frustration, and anger, go ahead and join. Other things to be angry about include: the death of health care reform, banks that received bailouts and are now hoarding money like Scrooge McDuck, or the increasing influence of corporations on our government (Thanks, Supreme Court!) We live in a time of "telescoping" technology, eventually facebook and all of your other faves will be changing by the second, if they haven't succumbed to obsolescence, so GET USED TO IT AND STOP WHINING!
Tomorrow, the Providence Urinal will publish it's weekly food section. I like to peruse that section to get recipes (although they're usually not very good), find the latest last ditch adverts for restaurants that are rapidly going under (usually a buy one/ get one deal, or "we'll totally suck you off if you eat here!"), and of course, the crossword puzzle (which usually takes me about ten minutes to finish, and that's twice as long as it takes me to read the rest of the paper. Sheesh, what a rag!)
Last week, after reading the restaurant review, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen a bad review in a while. Then it occurred to me that I don't think that I've ever read a bad restaurant review in our local "news"paper. My initial reaction was disbelief. Could Gail Chiampa, food writer for the paper, have never had a bad dining experience? How about Linda Beaulieu, former food writer for the ProJo? (Who my mother worked with at the Woonsocket Call years ago, incidentally.) Could she have gone all of those years without a bad dining experience? I mean, judging by the restaurant reviews, EVERY restaurant in RI is fantastic, and I know that's not true.
I then talked to a friend that's been around the RI restaurant biz almost as long as I have.
I asked him, "Have you ever seen/ read a bad restaurant review in the ProJo?" To which, he responded, "They don't print bad reviews."
"What do you mean," I said?
He responded, "If Gail (Chiampa) goes to a restaurant, and has a bad time, she doesn't write the review. She moves on to the next and hopes that it's better."
I, of course, asked how he knew this. He explained it like this:
A former boss had once told him this. Several years ago, a couple with a well established restaurant in Providence, decided to expand their Empire. This couple claimed to be the folks who brought the wood grilled pizza to the States. An immodest statement, to say the least. They opened a new venture in the heart of downtown Providence. Apparently, Linda Beaulieu, who was the food writer for the Urinal then, went to the new restaurant, was thoroughly underwhelmed, and wrote a scathingly bad review. When the review ran in the paper, the entrepreneurial couple was disappointed to put it mildly, and absolutely BATSHIT PISSED OFF to put it accurately. Well, apparently, this couple has a lot of pull at the newspaper (read advertising dollars), they called to complain about the review and the paper hasn't published a bad restaurant review since.
I've worked in the business for almost twenty years and a review, good or bad, has consequences. A good review can give your business a great boost, and a bad one can ruin you, unless you take the review for what it's supposed to be, and that is, constructive criticism. Address the points in the panning, get better, and move on. Calling the newspaper and complaining is the equivalent of the schoolyard, "I'm telling on you!" Nobody likes a snitch. It's even more disquieting that the paper didn't stand by it's reporter, shoving her under the proverbial bus.
A bad review is actually more beneficial to a restaurant than a good one because it gives the owners an OBJECTIVE VIEW of their establishment. It's hard to be objective when it's your pet project, but food writers are not there to serve as a restaurant's promotions manager. They are there to inform the public.
It's sad that in an area that is as inconsequential as food reviews, we can't even count on objectivity from our news sources. If that's the case, can we really expect objective reporting on the things that really matter?
This is a blatant and unforgivable disservice that the BloJo is perpetrating on the dining out public.Shame on the Providence Journal and shame on Ms. Chiampa. Go back to printing bad reviews when you have them, and when anyone calls to complain, tell them to thicken up their skin, or GET THE F*&# OUT OF THE BUSINESS!
Love, Peace, and Bacon grease!
1 comment:
The only newspapers that can afford to lose ad dollars from a negative review are the really big dailies. The newspaper biz has changed a lot in the last decade - it's all about the Benjamins.
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