I’m talking about those those free newspapers that have listings for bars, music, movies, and general ‘hipster’ stuff. I recently noticed that I’ve never seen a negative restaurant review in one, ever, and I’ve been reading them in various cities for over a decade. I can think of three possibilities:
Unqualified reviewers-Maybe the food critic is just somebody who eats out a lot and doesn’t mind the extra writing. If you just like food in general, maybe any restaurant is pretty good.
Fear of revenue loss-Because these papers are entirely ad supported (I think), maybe they don’t want to alienate the people who pay the bills.
Outright fraud-Reviews only get published at the request of (and with the approval of) restaurant owners, who pay over and above the normal rate for what amounts to a big ad.
So, is there anybody familiar with the peculiarities of publishing these things who cares to enlighten me?
Sure, I used to work for one of those, and we published negative reviews frequently. We also lost some advertisers over it, but not enough to worry about. For the most part, restaurants bought dinky little ads that didn’t amount to much in the first place. So maybe we lost $95 a week. Pfft.
Very slightly related, we once ran a front-page story about the drug bust of a well-known local businessman, who was one of our major advertisers. He did not pull his ads.
My free weekly (I own it) is publishing our first this week. No money changed hands and it’s for a new restaurant that just opened in town. It boiled down to good food, way costly.
I know a few people that write restaurant reviews for a free weekly, and as they tell it, most “negative reviews” are based on fact, just as good reviews are. They may lose “Joe’s Lunch” after mentioning that the service was poor, the food overpriced, and poorly made, but they gain street cred for being honest. This actually drives up the circulation and value of advertising space they sell. (A simplified formula, albeit, but (waves hands) you get the gist of it).
Think of it this way, would you take a reviewer who gave “Joe’s Lunch” 4.5 Forks, when you know damn well that the bad food is expenisve and the service stinks, verry seriously? But if they tell you the truth about a place, good or bad, the cred of the reviwer grows, and the paper that carries it as well.
Joe’s lunch maybe buys $500/yr worth of ads, but the fact that the readers can feel confident in the reviewer, makes the paper more popular and hence increases circulation/ad revenue.
Westword, here in Denver, has negative reviews. I’m far more disappointed in The Denver Post, whose new reviewer has instituted a system where even a one star is still worth eating at. I’ve yet to see a no star review from him: Avoid this place like the plague!
Well, there are all kinds of “free weeklies.” If you’re talking about alternative press weeklies (here in Austin, that would mean the Austin Chronicle), the type of publication most likely to carry Cecil’s column), the reviews are almost certainly legit. Not necessarily well written, accurate, or worthy of being taken seriously, but definitely legit. The columnists are giving their honest opinions of local restaurants, just as they do about local bands and local artists.
In my experience, the most dishonest “reviews” you’ll come across are those in airline magazines. In almost any airline in-flight magazine, you’ll find a bogus listing of “The Greatest American Steakhouses” or “The World’s Greatest Seafood Restaurants,” published by “The Fine Dining Society” or “The Gourmet Club.” Invariably, you’ll find that those “clubs” or “societies” don’t exist, and that the restaurants on those top ten lists PAID some advertising firm to PUT them on those lists!
Note that alternative weekly doesn’t automatically mean “unqualified reviewers” or poor journalism. For example, Jonathan Gold, the restaurant reviewer for the L.A. Weekly, is well-respected enough to have won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism this year.
Based on info from a couple of friends who have been restaurant reviewers:
The reviewers themselves try to avoid negative reviews. They know very well how a kitchen or a waiter can have an off night, and will generally go back a second or even a third time. Only if it’s bad each time, and each person in their party is unhappy will they write a negative review.
And they prefer to write (and readers want to read) about good food, not bad food. So they will give more column-inches to, for example, the good seafood dishes, and much less mention given to their ‘only mediocre’ beef dishes.
That also explains why completely negative reviews often don’t see print at all. Readers want to hear about good places to eat. And a reasonable-sized city has so many good restaurants to review that papers tend to dislike wasting their limited space on bad ones. (Besides, a bad restaurant may already be out of business by the time a review gets published – the restaurant business is very uncertain!)
Unqualified reviewers aren’t generally a problem; they can be easily replaced. There are lots of people who can tell a good dining experience from a bad one, so just find one of them who can also write well, and convey this to your readers.
A more common problem is that reviewers let their personal biases creep into their reviews too much. I recall a local reviewer whose ‘hot button’ was waiters who interrupted diners conversations – that got so much space in reviews that it was hard to tell how the food tasted. Another became increasingly vegetarian over the years, and reviews tended to concentrate on those dishes rather than the main part of the menu.
But actual fraud: publishers ordering a good review for advertisers’ restaurants, or reviewers taking bribes to write a good review – my friends said such things almost never happened. And they were sure that they (and the other reviewers in town) would have heard about it if it happened.
I think the OP should clarify what he means by free newspaper. I have lived in a number of differnet cities and always grab the free alternative newspaper usually available at the local Border’s, Tower Records (the good old days), the library, etc. I have never noticed that the reviews are universally positive, but depending on where you live, if the city already has a good reputation for restaurants, there isn’t much percentage in opening a bad one. What I am wondering is if he might be referring to those shopper’s guides that come in the mail that sometimes have reviews and showtimes for theaters etc. I would not trust those at all.
I suspect that there is a lot of variation in the quality of restaurant reviews in free newspapers. Todd Kliman, the reviewer in The Washington City Paper, the paper that runs The Straight Dope in D.C., was good enough that he won a James Beard award for his writing. He was hired away by The Washingtonian (the city magazine) to do their restaurant reviewing.
As are a bunch of other free weeklies around the country.
Robb Walsh, who writes for the Press, has won a bunch of awards & written several books. He’s not afraid to slam a hopeless restaurant, but is more likely to point out the strong points & the weak.
Here’s his take on the re-opening of Armando’s, a former watering-hole of the monied set.
To clarify, I mean the papers that several posters have called alternative weeklies, the kind that can be picked up at a record store/bookstore/coffee shop.
Another point to keep in mind – and this is true for reveiws of almost everything, not just restaurants – is that papers and magazines often avoid negative reviews because negative reviews are less useful, as crappy products tend to disappear quickly. There’s no point (aside from humour) in publishing a review that says “This place is so bad, I expect the Health Department to shut it down for good at any moment.”
Also there is a difference between a papers actual in-depth review, which should be honest, and the section that lists blurbs from dozens of restaurants- those are paid for by the restaurant, and should not be taken as an unbiased review.