The news that the San Francisco Chronicle might not make it through the year was predictably greeted with hootin' and hollerin' from the freeloading trolls who visit the sfgate.com website every day to complain about the quality of the free news they read there.
If noticed by the wine blogging community, it will also undoubtedly unleash a tide of "who needs 'em" posts.
But the wine world would suffer without The Chronicle, even though the newspaper has ended its weekly wine section. Most bloggers don't want to admit it, but there are certain functions a newspaper plays that blogs cannot substitute for.
Here's a key one: people who weren't even thinking about wine might, in their search for the TV listings or Dilbert, stumble upon an article about Austrian Riesling. That does not happen with blogs. You have to actively search for Austrian Riesling. Or, failing that, you have to be visiting an excellent blog like vinography.com, where you find an article about Austrian Riesling -- in which case you're clearly already interested in wine.
General interest newspapers are one of the few media that get people who aren't currently interested in wine to pay attention. Nobody surfs randomly through the Internet and happens upon Steve Heimoff's blog. But people do flip through a newspaper, when they're done with the sports section, and spot an article about value wines from Argentina. Maybe that's in the back of their head when they go to Safeway to buy tortillas and anti-perspirant, and they pick up a bottle. Maybe that's the bottle that gets them hooked. THEN they read Heimoff and Vinography every day, not before.
Go ahead and mock the traditional media for all its stodgy adherence to the 20th century. Few industries currently get better free publicity from anyone than the local food and wine industries get from The Chronicle. Considering the tiny budgets in the wine industry for outreach to newbie drinkers, the wine world will miss the paper more than any other industry.
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5 comments:
Thank you for providing some good counterpoints to balance the "traditional-print-media-must-die" song and dance.
Arthur,
winesooth.com
Sorry, good riddance IMHO. Why if the Chron's wine and food section is so important why doesn't the wholesaler, retailer, restaurateur or wine consumer know about it when your wine gets a stellar recommendation. It's like the Chron's kudos go off a vacuum.
I never felt the writing was that creative. Same old stuff. Mostly the stuff the industry feeds new writers and they promptly regurgitate verbatim.
Look, you can have the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal delivered and get better writing for about the same price as a second grade rag. We have limited time to sit down an read newsprint, we might as make it quality time. And if we are going to fill up our landfills with newsprint, lets be throwing out something we actually read and enjoyed.
Leslie- I disagree with your comments. From my industry experience, wineries with decent PR departments always know when the Chronicle reviews their wines and are usually quick to spread the word that they got a good review. Whether retailers, etc decide to take advantage of that is another matter. I certainly would miss the Chronicle, food, wine news and all if it closed.
2 of the 3 posters here are not the consumers illustrated in this opinion. They are the housewife waiting for the tires at Les Schwab, the guy having breakfast before work. You know, regular folk. Who are not ever going to get a sub scrip to the WSJ, or read the NY Times. Not everyone is as dialed into the fast paced, uber tech world that these two Elitists come from. Newspapers are still a great source of information at a pace that fits many peoples comfort zone. Many people HATE reading the ewspaper online, and would Never read a blog. but they like good wine, and should have info readily available to them at their level.
Sorry, just Leslie - I said 2 of the 3, I was mistaken. Viva is right. The writing at the Chron may not always be stellar...but the carry a lot of outsied press like Jancis R. and others.
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