Food Blog Code of Ethics 2.0

In just a few short years since food blogging became an established sub-group of the blogging world, an online community of mavericks blazed a path through the wild west of online food writing. Trend setting men and women like Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes, David Lebovitz, Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim, and Shauna Ahern of Gluten Free Girl pioneered an entirely new way of looking at and documenting their experience with the food.

Their work began simply. With time, however, they began to innovate, create, and establish the groundwork for an entire genre. Thanks to their early efforts, where there was once nothing but desert, there grew whole communities of food obsessed artists, consumers, and everything in between.

Recognizing the need for modernization, newspapers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times brought food reporting online. Magazines added internet features. Media sites like Serious Eats and Eater popped up as impromptu news sources and gossip columns.  Businesses that recognized the financial potential of harnessing the power of public opinion, they created online reviewing sites like Citysearch and Yelp.

The internet was the New World and in short time it was colonized with innovative new food writers, food photographers and stylists, online reviewers, gossips, and opinionated commenters. Innovation begat breakthroughs. In very little time the once small community of “food bloggers” multiplied at great speed.

And yet, there was very little talk about responsibility.

The Food Blog Code of Ethics

Back in early 2009, in a little corner booth at a Los Angeles restaurant, my friend Leah Greenstein and I—two food writers and restaurant professionals—discussed our observation of a disturbing trend within the restaurant community. Inside the kitchens and dining rooms of restaurants across the country, owners, chefs, and service professionals seem to have a mounting distrust of anyone calling themselves a food blogger. We recognized that the restaurant professionals’ swelling dislike of the online food blogging community was due in part to reckless and irresponsible conduct from people who published their views and opinions online. Yelpers wrote reviews with the intention of destroying businesses. Bloggers used their websites as a threat to do harm to restaurants or a business’ reputation.

Leah and I were frightened of what seemed to be coming: an inevitable war between a lawless group of online publishers and the establishment (restaurant professionals, food reviewers, and the law). Rather than be damaged by the reckless acts of others, Leah and I set out to write our own set of guiding principles that carved out a path on the higher ground of ethics. We hoped our manifesto would inspire us and perhaps others, to think about the power and responsibilities of online publishing on a daily basis.

Turns out, our manifesto did get a lot of people talking (and arguing). It spread through the internet like wildfire across an open prairie. Along the way we might have gotten a little scorched, but the positive results outweighed the challenges.

Soon after, the FTC stepped in to represent the first arm of the US Law. The Federal Trade Commission threatened suit against businesses that failed to reveal their financial dealings with influential online publishers. Suddenly, blogs, websites, and even profit-driven media sites began disclosing corporate sponsorships and posting their own code of ethics. Food blogging conference halls buzzed with people having heated debates over the limits of language to protect them from being prosecuted, ridiculed, or devalued for not disclosing freebies, trips, samples, give aways, and other gifts.

In many ways, the Wild West of the food blogging world began to seem a little more civil.

That is, until the mavericks became online celebrities. That’s when the trolls arrived. Hate-mongering individuals who spewed spiteful comments and emails from false accounts began popping up all across the internet.

Then Twitter came along. Twitter opened up whole new territories like a speeding train through the early gold mining towns of the Wild West. Those who did not have time to blog, had time for Tweets. Suddenly, anyone with a thought about food or restaurants could express themselves with lightening fast results. As the speed of everything online increased, the attention to responsibility and accountability dwindled.  Who had time to think about the responsibilities of what they had to say? It was just 140 characters. How much trouble could they get in?

Friends, I see before us another turning point. Though the Wild West of the blogosphere may look a lot less untamed than it once was, many of its inhabitants are still feral.

No matter how much a person might say they don’t have to play by anyone’s rules, one thing is clear: No one is above the law.  It doesn’t matter if you are a commenter, a blogger, a Twitter star, or even an editor of a gossip rag, eventually you will be held accountable for your actions. Courts and government agencies are building cases against the uncivilized. We are expected to be civil.  We should take it upon ourselves to be responsible, accountable, and honorable before someone takes that right to self-govern away from us.

Consider this, if you create anything that goes online, you have power.  If you have power, you have responsibility.

So, in hopes up giving the original Food Blog Code of Ethics a bit of a sprucing up, Leah and I got together to make it a little bit more contemporary (and short).

Please swing by the Food Blog Code of Ethics 2.0 to see if the code we wrote works for you.

Today I am moderating a panel at the Western Foodservice and Hospitality Expo with Brad Metzger of Brad Metzger Restaurant Solutions, to speak about the relationship between online food writers and chefs. If you happen to live in (or near) San Diego, please come by and join in on the conversation.

Service 101: Why Restaurants and Diners Need Restaurant Critics

Clearly, food is big business. More and more people—big corporations and media groups—want in on the current obsession with food. The Huffington Post has food coverage, the Food Network is looking to expand to a double network, and CNN just added a dedicated branch of its online division to culinary news.

But as the power of the food as entertainment grows, the force of the critic recedes. Yesterday on Time’s online magazine, Josh Ozersky wrote about the fleeting life cycle of newspaper critics and warned food lovers that web site forums like Urban Spoon and Yelp minimize the power of the newspaper critic and threaten to end the lifespan of the professional food criticism.

What’s in it for the restaurants and the diners?

Read More to Find Out Why Critics Are Important… »

Food Blog Ethics: a personal manifesto that went viral

man on beach

To be honest, Leah and I had no idea what we would be getting ourselves into when we wrote our manifesto. We had no idea just how many people were going to read this thing.

Monday of last week I called my friend Leah of Spicy Salty Sweet to suggest we write a post about food blogging ethics. The subject was at the forefront of my mind after weeks of heated discussions with fellow food bloggers across the state. Leah and I got up early on Tuesday and met for breakfast to discuss the topic. When the plates were cleared from the table of our local breakfast joint, we had written down five major points of what we thought our blogs should stand for. When we finished we looked at the scribbled page and saw it for what it was: a manifesto.

Like Jerry Maguire in the opening scene of the Cameron Crowe film of the same name, I was excited by the sharing this food blogging mission statement. I wanted to share this co-authored document but I didn’t know what would be the best format. Post simultaneously on our separate blogs? Share the same post title?

Before I left for work that night I called some sage food bloggers for advice. I asked how they would recommend two independent food bloggers simultaneously weigh in on the same subject.

“Maybe you should start a separate blog together,” one blogger suggested.

By Wednesday—between our jobs and maintaining our blogs–Leah and I had fleshed out our five-point manifesto (it reminded me of the code created by a handful of pragmatic, Danish filmmakers). We looked for a title for our document. We wanted a name that was obvious and easy to find in a Google search if someone happened to be looking for such a topic. We decided on The Food Blog Code of Ethics.

We posted the blog for the first time on Thursday afternoon, before I went to work. A Twitter-inspired discussion started and many bloggers began re-tweeting about The Code. While I was busy waiting tables, people all over the Internet started arguing about the responsibility and freedoms of online publishers. By the time I got home at 2 AM, more than a thousand people had visited our site. Comments poured in. Many asked to join. Some said they were interested by the discussion. Others were angry and fearful at the words we had just posted.

Overheard on the street

The online discussions had gotten so loud that someone at The New York Times overheard. By Friday morning, I awoke to a phone call from Leah. I slept through the first call. The second one got me from bed.

“We’re in the New York Times!” she screamed.

In less than 48 hours—thanks to the power of the Internet and Twitter–The Food Blog Code of Ethics went from a personal statement of two people to a nationally distributed document.

It’s been less than a week and already our lives have been changed by the publication of document. We have been given the opportunity to discuss the politics of blogging with people we have never met before. We are engaging with others on these electronic pages and responding to our supporters and detractors. We are facing personal attacks and vitriolic remarks while we encourage discussion. We are taking part in a fast paced discussion about accountability, civility and fairness.

Though our code was written for ourselves (and for anyone else that shared our views on the need for personal accountability in the food blogging world) the fact remains that this document went viral. Within hours our personal statement became Something Bigger. This experience only highlights the need to understand just how powerful the Internet can be to make a personal statement a public document.

A few days ago we were two people talking ethics. A few days later we were an organization against freedom.

This is not what we are.

Keep clear

We are two people making statement that we personally believe in. For us personal accountability and truth in self-publishing is an important credo that we feel strongly enough about to express to others that are willing to listen. Personal accountability is a choice. Not everyone believes in accountability or a personal code of conduct. In the US, there are no laws that insist we have “good manners” or even etiquette for that matter. No one is going to get in trouble for cutting someone in line, skipping church or being rude to a bank teller. But I do hold myself to a higher code of ethic and personal accountability. That’s my choice and I’m not telling any one to do things my way. I do, however, feel the need to express what I believe in. If you don’t agree with me, don’t read it, and for goodness sakes, don’t feel any pressure to do it! .

In the discussion of free speech, it’s been interesting to hear people raise a fist against to the notion of personal accountability and self-imposed standards while at the same time those very same people are calling for us to shut up, rescind our statements, delete the Food Ethics Blog and go away. As US citizens, we are lucky to have the right to freedom of speech. It applies to all of us, regardless if we agree with one another.

Please know that we, the original authors of the code, are just two individuals that came together to write a document that defined the values we believe in. There will be no charges to be part of us, no branding of those blogs that are “good” or “bad”. There is no master scheme here. We just wanted to stand up and say what we believe in.

Food Blogger Code of Ethics

Say the words “I’m a food blogger” in some circles and you may find eyes twinkle in appreciation. Say those same words in other circles (in a restaurant for example) and you may find yourself being asked to kindly leave.

As a food writer, restaurant professional and blogger, I travel within many different circles of people. Unfortunately within the restaurant community, food blogger is a derogatory term used to describe everyone from the angry Yelper to the thoughtful on-line food memoirist. Lately, I’ve found it more and more difficult to discuss my blog without giving some kind of footnoted explanation of What-Kind-of-Food-Blogger I am.

There’s room for all of us in the food blogging world. Thre’s room for the food gossips, recipe developers, food photographers and stylists, cultural commentators, gourmet media sites, culinary storytellers, recipe memoirists, chef groupies, restaurant reviewers, food obsessives and everything in between. But for better or for worse, in the new world of food blogging, anything goes.

A lot has changed since the handful of groundbreaking blogs (Orangette, Amateur Gourmet, Waiter Rant) first hit the Internet. Now there are hundreds of websites dedicated to offering opinionated food lovers a place to share their judgments on food related topics. There are even more sites dedicated to food porn, recipe swapping, restaurant reviews and restaurant gossip. The blog world is expanding exponentially, and with all this exciting growth, has come a wave of differing styles, talent and professionalism.

I take my blog writing very seriously. Too seriously sometimes. Recently, as I approached the opening day of the new restaurant I’m working at I started to think about all the food bloggers that would be descending on the fledgling restaurant. How would these food bloggers write about the restaurant? Would they be fair? Would they offer a first impression or would they write a post and call it a full review after only one visit?

These questions got me thinking…Why shouldn’t bloggers hold themselves to the same kind of guidelines as restaurant reviewers? Why aren’t more bloggers concerned about full disclosure, accountability, good research and standing behind their words?

The Food Blog Code of Ethics

In order to define myself as a food blogger, my friend and writing partner Leah Greenstein of Spicy Salty Sweet decided to create a food blogger manifesto. We call it the The Food Blog Code of Ethics.

We felt it was important to us to define what our ethical standards are and hold ourselves to that higher code because there are many food bloggers that offer judgment without full disclosure and due diligence. The Code is not meant to be a mandatory thing for everyone in the blogosphere. This is our way to define what our standards are.

Please take a moment to swing by our website. Read through our pages. Tells us what you think. And if you feel like you hold yourself up to these kinds of standards in food blogging, join us!