I chose to go see this lecture because I love food of all types and I thought it would be interesting to learn about food journalism. The speakers were various writers and editors from food blogs and magazines. They first started talking about a guy named Charlie Trotter and his legacy. He had just passed and he was a famous chef but I hadn’t heard of him. They said he teated his customers as his audience. Only one of the speakers had not heard of him and the ones who had revered him. I think its amazing that a chef could become famous for the greatness of his food. I had only ever heard of chef Ramsey from Hell’s Kitchen and I only know him for being on TV.
They talked about how the interest in cooking has grown because people like to show it off. I though this was interesting because I have noticed this myself. On Instagram it is a common thing to post photos of what you had for dinner. They also talked about how social media and TV has changed food. I didn’t think that TV had a real impact on the food industry until they talked about it. They said TV made food more exciting and accessible to people because you could make for yourself, what you saw on TV, with them. Also with the addition of Yelp, the role of food critics has changed. Anyone can find what they should eat at any restaurant on Yelp. Now critics tell readers about what the restaurant has to add to society.
As advice to those who want to become food writers, they said to focus on just being a good writer and don’t think only about how to write about food. Good food writing is good writing. Then they talked about how you have to assume nobody cares, because they don’t. You have to make people care by having an interesting story. I found many things interesting in this lecture but it did not make me want to write about food. It just made me hungry.