Here we go again. Last year it was the Wine Spectator who spoke out against the wine bloggers after the bloggers caught wind of the WS scandal regarding the magazine presenting one of their esteemed "Wine Spectator Award of Excellence!" to a faux restaurant. The scandal was exposed at the American Association of Wine Economist Conference 2008 and later on the AAWE wine blog.
Instead of the magazine explaining their error and mustering up a good defense, they took it to their WS Forums message board and spun the focus towards wine bloggers instead:
"This is the problem with the 'blogosphere'. It's a lazy person's journalism. No one does any real research, but rather they just slap some hyperlinks up and throw a little conjecture at the wall, and presto! you get some hits and traffic..." - James Molesworth, Senior Editor to the Wine Spectator
This year, and not to be outdone by Molesworth, Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate took his turn to speak out against those pesky wine bloggers and he also chose to do it on his eRobertParker.com message board, titled under “What bothers me about Wine Blogs... (and please note how I slapped some hyperlinks up)
“…looking at that Bloggers Conference, it does look like a big and free sloppy kiss and then some from the California wine industry...with much more than minimal hospitality offered...love to see some transparency from the bloggers(how many of them are paying for travel,car rental,hotels and meals?)...or should I say blobbers since they are the source of much of the misinformation, distortion, and egegious falsehoods spread with reckless abandon on the internet…" - Robert Parker, Founder Wine Advocate
Did Robert Parker just call us “blobbers?” That’s a pretty funny name, especially from a guy by the name of - - - Bob.
That’s right boys and girls. The lesson here is: when the crumbling cork gets shoved into your - - umm - - bottle of Chateau Petrus and you can’t finger it out or your worm on your favorite corkscrew gets all bent out of shape or when you catch a nasty case of pantie-scratching 2,4,6-trichloroanisole - - whadda ya do? Take it to your forum and blame the "wine blobbers!" Wine forums are known to hate-hate-
hate those pesky self-proclaimed wine critics known as wine bloggers. Your online message board will stand behind you with a mob mentality assisted with the best AOL technology! You will be able to depend on your forum as they show their displeasure with frownie yellow faces holding wine glasses and their own platitudes of wine criticism and falsehoods and reckless abandon and…
But chin up wine blob…err.. bloggers everywhere! We are being recognized and bashed by the best! Sigh - - if only Al Gore would have gotten around to inventing the internet a little earlier, like back in the 1970’s when His Majesty Prince of Pointiness first introduced his vision of how wines should be critiqued, because Bob and his Bitches would have cornered this wine blogging thing and given us all some respectability!
Gosh, I sure hope I get some hits and traffic over this distorted reckless abandon of lazy person's journalism.
Instead of the magazine explaining their error and mustering up a good defense, they took it to their WS Forums message board and spun the focus towards wine bloggers instead:
"This is the problem with the 'blogosphere'. It's a lazy person's journalism. No one does any real research, but rather they just slap some hyperlinks up and throw a little conjecture at the wall, and presto! you get some hits and traffic..." - James Molesworth, Senior Editor to the Wine Spectator
This year, and not to be outdone by Molesworth, Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate took his turn to speak out against those pesky wine bloggers and he also chose to do it on his eRobertParker.com message board, titled under “What bothers me about Wine Blogs... (and please note how I slapped some hyperlinks up)
“…looking at that Bloggers Conference, it does look like a big and free sloppy kiss and then some from the California wine industry...with much more than minimal hospitality offered...love to see some transparency from the bloggers(how many of them are paying for travel,car rental,hotels and meals?)...or should I say blobbers since they are the source of much of the misinformation, distortion, and egegious falsehoods spread with reckless abandon on the internet…" - Robert Parker, Founder Wine Advocate
Did Robert Parker just call us “blobbers?” That’s a pretty funny name, especially from a guy by the name of - - - Bob.
That’s right boys and girls. The lesson here is: when the crumbling cork gets shoved into your - - umm - - bottle of Chateau Petrus and you can’t finger it out or your worm on your favorite corkscrew gets all bent out of shape or when you catch a nasty case of pantie-scratching 2,4,6-trichloroanisole - - whadda ya do? Take it to your forum and blame the "wine blobbers!" Wine forums are known to hate-hate-
hate those pesky self-proclaimed wine critics known as wine bloggers. Your online message board will stand behind you with a mob mentality assisted with the best AOL technology! You will be able to depend on your forum as they show their displeasure with frownie yellow faces holding wine glasses and their own platitudes of wine criticism and falsehoods and reckless abandon and…But chin up wine blob…err.. bloggers everywhere! We are being recognized and bashed by the best! Sigh - - if only Al Gore would have gotten around to inventing the internet a little earlier, like back in the 1970’s when His Majesty Prince of Pointiness first introduced his vision of how wines should be critiqued, because Bob and his Bitches would have cornered this wine blogging thing and given us all some respectability!
Gosh, I sure hope I get some hits and traffic over this distorted reckless abandon of lazy person's journalism.
7 comments:
Good rant. They. Just. Don't. Get. It.
I think this Dr.Vino-spawned fracas with eBob/RMP/DrJay/Squires now deserves officially to be called "Advogate."
Thanks Tish!
And don't forget to get your Wine Bloggers Conference '09 T-shirt (you know the conference, the one that looks like a big and free sloppy kiss and then some from the California wine industry?) Suck it Parker!Cheers,
Catie
Advogate - LOL Priceless... from an aspiring wine blobber & thanks for the link to Suck it Parker!
Thanks Frug for checking in!
With the help (and apologies to) Ernest Hemmingway, I've come up with a new t-shirt "WINE IS THE MOST CIVILIZED THING IN THE WORLD - until you start wine blogging"
C~
Thanks for your blop...er I mean blog...lol. I'd rather trust a local source,follow a local link, and drink a local wine any day of the week!!!
Blog on!
Yay! Thanks for the input. And of course, you totally understand us wine blobbers because we are very similar to your students in that we blob on the right side of the brain and love to explore the wine world around us.
Blob on!
I whole heartily agree with your rant, bloggers are in no way lazy journalists but rather a shift towards greater citizen participation. It could be anything from wine to politics and everything in between bloggers provide a new voice to established issues. The reason for the decline of traditional print media is not because people started blogging but rather because are getting fed up with being told what to do or what to drink. Wine bloggers offer a different side to the wine experience and traditional Wine experts would be wise to recognize this.
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