WineDiverGirl made a blog post about wine bloggers and wineries working together. Famous, or infamous, Wine Enthusiast writer Steve Heimoff cut up her thoughts on his blog.
I posted this response on Heimoff’s blog and would like to share it with you:
Steve brings up some good points about the perception of independence and objectivity. As a former CPA I worked with that issue daily. CPA’s doing financial work are supposed to be independent of the clients who are paying them directly. Mostly this works, except at Enron …
A “Going Concern” opinion in a financial statement will often tank a company and the CPA may not get paid. However, we do it when standards require it, except at Enron… I’ve had to fire large clients who tried to hide financial deals from me. Terminating 10% of your annual revenue is a far more important action than a bad wine review.
I believe that bloggers can develop the same integrity that CPA’s do. Like CPA’s, bloggers can dig into the operations as WineDiverGirl suggests. (She works for a winery by the way.) Bloggers need to develop some professional standards to do that but it can work and can have value for the consumers.
Steve is applying standards from wine writing which I support. Steve is not seeing the world from a perspective outside his discipline. Wine blogging can be a very different discipline from wine writing that Steve is invested in.
I have no clue if wine bloggers will make this type of objectivity a goal and achieve it. However, I’m experimenting with such CPA type concepts with my blog.
Last point, are casual wine bloggers or professional wine writers more like the average consumers? I think this matters because I am strongly against the point rating system process and any other kind of evaluation that is out of the context that the average consumer would taste in. Tastes change dramatically with context.
Wine bloggers are the mainstream consumers by definition. Social media is the average consumer rising up to be heard. Few are paid anything and almost all have a net outflow of cash for their efforts. They are widely dispersed culturally and rarely, if ever, review wines in the meaningless sterile environments that the “pros” do. Bloggers ARE the consumer rabble rising up to be heard.
I appreciate Steve’s thoughts and hope he continues with blunt criticism. I enjoy and respect the discourse.
Jim @ WineQuesters.com
The wine tasting road trip lifestyle
California
I thought this conversation had faded away… I guess not.
At least a few people are getting some blog traffic out of the ‘controversy’
Hope everyone had a good Turkey Day.
You know what? We should commend WDG for throwing suggestions out there and thinking outside of the box, as many have already noted.
I am also grateful on this Thanksgiving Day that there is a minor controversy in the world of wine writing that does not involve me!
Pass the stuffing!
I dunno… I read just enough history to be dangerous. It seems that the more things seem to change the more they stay the same. We’re all just human beans running around wanting to share our thoughts, ideas, and opinions – and wanting to be heard. 200 years ago you needed access to a printing press to publish a pamphlet; today it’s a blog and computer. The writer will do what she needs to do to be heard and valued, and the reader will decide who he trusts and values. And this is how it will (hopefully) always be.
This is a well-reasoned post. The blogging landscape seems to shift significantly every month, and with each shift grows bigger and stronger. What continues to impress me is how conscious the most adept wine bloggers are of ethics. By contrast, the magazine Steve writes and blogs for (and which I edited ten+ years ago) seems to have no such consciousness, and is unlikely to ever be referred to as the Wine Ethicist. As upright as Steve may be personally, his talk here of “standards” rings pretty hollow.
Perhaps Steve can lead W.E. to higher ground. Maybe they’ll disclose which articles were generated by junkets; maybe they will place the word ADVERTISEMENT at the top of the buying guide pages that feature paid label reproductions; maybe they’ll stop selling wines (inlcluding many the magazine has reviewsed) via their website wineexpress.com; and maybe they can come up with some industry awards that pass the sniff test.
In the meantime, it is ultra clear that the only place in the wine world where you can find straight talk these days is on blogs.
Steve, I’m not sure blogging requires that. Is Fox News impartial and objective? Rush Limbaugh as an extreme example? They don’t even bother with full disclosure let alone any other standards, and they are successful and apparently valued.
You are there for that market. That is your niche and traditionally it has been a big one. However, that niche seems to be “shattering” and not just in wine media. Think of Aaron Brown on CNN. His reporting was careful, balanced, objective, and wonderful. He was also fired because there aren’t enough of us who valued his reporting. I respect Anderson Cooper but he is more sensational, emotional, and opinionated, like a blogger.
I’m still trying to figure all this out. As you know I’m a fan of media philosopher Marshall McLuhan and some of his ideas may help. I am somewhat sure that bloggers will not evolve into old wine media and there will probably be a tension between the two camps. Bloggers will probably evolve into a new media style with a new market. Probably as much entertainment as substance. I’m starting to play with that idea.
- jim
Jim, thanks for a thoughtful post. I have no idea where blogging is going, but I know it’s going somewhere big. It may be true, as you write, that “Wine blogging can be a very different discipline from wine writing that Steve is invested in.” But there should be the same standards of ethics, impartiality and avoidance of conflict of interest. Shouldn’t there? Just because blogging is new and different doesn’t mean it’s immune from contamination.
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Thanks for your perspective. I really appreciate it and the context you offer about that perspective. Any conversation is good; conversation that adds value, offers solutions, considers new and alternate ways of doing things I think are even better.A chorus of the same note is not at all interesting, and harmony can take time to perfect. I wonder when we’ll get there. Certainly we are on our way, though.
Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.