>As I say, you and I agree entirely. Right? <
Or close enough to make no never mind.
>Incidentally, KY, it's not quite true that you can't learn to write reviews the way you can learn other things. <
Maybe I wasn't clear. I meant there are no formal venues for learning that job. There is no class in journalism school called "restaurant review writing 101." Nor book, nor movie, nor concert review writing 101.
No matter what the discipline, reviewers learn to do it as an on-the-job thing. Mostly they start out as somebody with an interest in the subject, and start doing reviews. In the ideal world, as they improve their own knowledge and skill they get better jobs.
As it turns out, reviewers, as a class, usually start out working for free. They write for the local shopper, or, more likely nowadays, contribute to blogs, etc. If they're any good, and they want to pursue it, they then graduate to paying jobs. Small newspapers that pay them, maybe, five bucks a review. Eventually, if they're really good andt what they do, maybe the NY Times and Washington Post hire them.
>Stylistically, it's not that difficult to sound authoritative in a brief review if you have decent prose. This leads into the problem I was discussing before about reviewers pretending to know what they're talking about when they don't. <
All that is true. But, as the old saw has it, fool me once, same on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. If you visit a restaurant, and find it the antithesis of what a reviewer says, well, maybe it was just a difference of opinion. If the same thing happens several times, then it becomes obvious that the reviewer doesn't know what he's talking about, and nobody pays any attention.
There are all sorts of reasons why a poor reviewer might remain on the job. But that person never achieves a position where he/she actually influences anybody. Among decent chefs, that reviewer is an object of amusement and scorn, not somebody they're afraid of.
If somebody who actually influences people pans a restaurant there usually are good reasons for it. And the ones who complain the loudest about bad reviews are the ones who earned them in the first place.
>This is I think why Ed is so worked up about reviewers. <
I don't think so. But we can discuss that privately if you want.  |