Found on Craigslist Santa Barbara
RESTAURANT CRITIC
Reply to: kbradford@newspress.com
Date: 2007-05-22, 1:40PM PDT
Scene, the weekly arts and entertainment magazine of the Santa Barbara News-Press, is looking for a local writer with a foodie background to serve as its restaurant critic. The ideal candidate will have journalism experience and a food or restaurant background. We're looking for someone to write straightforward critiques of local restaurants, with an authoritative and unbiased voice that gives credit when it's due, but isn't afraid to explain why something just doesn't work. This is a freelance position. The writer-reporter will eat at each restaurant at least twice, and will conduct original research and interviews. One article will be published each week, for $125, which includes dining expenses. Please respond to Keri Bradford, Arts & Entertainment Editor, at kbradford@newspress.com.
Reply to: kbradford@newspress.com
Date: 2007-05-22, 1:40PM PDT
Scene, the weekly arts and entertainment magazine of the Santa Barbara News-Press, is looking for a local writer with a foodie background to serve as its restaurant critic. The ideal candidate will have journalism experience and a food or restaurant background. We're looking for someone to write straightforward critiques of local restaurants, with an authoritative and unbiased voice that gives credit when it's due, but isn't afraid to explain why something just doesn't work. This is a freelance position. The writer-reporter will eat at each restaurant at least twice, and will conduct original research and interviews. One article will be published each week, for $125, which includes dining expenses. Please respond to Keri Bradford, Arts & Entertainment Editor, at kbradford@newspress.com.
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 5/24/2007 07:55:00 PM
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24 Comments:
What a deal.
Well, all that work to write an article and only $125. No wonder food critics go to expensive restaurants.
$500/month and all you can eat.
I wonder who is going to be replaced? (Hah!) My personal favorite food writer is Waverly Root. Anybody read him any more?
The ad forgets to mention that next stop after foodie critic is Publisher, just like the hunky Baron von Nipperburger.
Who needs newspaper classified ads?
Even the News-Press has gone to craigslist!
how about hiring a "writer-reporter" to cover the news!? Has UCSB and the school board dropped off the planet, with the paper instead being dragged down to Wendy McCaw's level of sniffling and snuffling basil fried truffles?
Not only are they looking for a restaurant critic, they are looking for more:
Reporter: http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=659184
Assistant City Editor/Assignment Editor: http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=659180
Gives those "Will Work for Food" signs new meaning, eh?
If someone takes the job, I guess they'll be dining at "WENDY'S"? [please stop me] Is this on? Anyone from Ventura here ?? Pismo??? Let's hear it for Vandenberg....eat twice, review once,[a perfect show for NPTV] gosh, for little pay AND the chance to work with baron von H20, trained travis and Wendy the wonder owner, they really should be Paying the NP with any money they had left after dining at Lucky's, Square one, Stonehouse, sevilla, Tre lune, the Habit, twice. Will that be to go or eat here? but don't go by me, I could be wrong.
don jose:
It's not "AND all you can eat" and it's much less than $500 per month.
Out of each $125 the food critic must pay for two meals.
So it's $500 per month less the cost of 8 restaurant meals.
Don Jose, you misunderstood the pay--it's not "$500/month and all you can eat." The paltry pay "includes dining expenses." I'm pretty sure that means if you eat at a restaurant where the dinner comes to $125, you're being paid in food. But the glory of seeing your byline in the illustrious News-Press is no doubt worth gold!
I guess I won't be applying. $125 to cover the cost of two meals AND the time spent writing the review? Basically you would either be working for free or paying for the privilage of writing a review. What kind of white-out are they sniffing at De la Guerra Plaza?
“Satire is SO beastly!” – Anon.
The Continuing Adventures of Windy McCuckoo and Baron von Weisenheimer
THE STORY SO FAR: Windy suspects that somewhere deep in the recesses of the Baron’s water-logged brain resistance may be building to her enormous charms (and fortune). Meanwhile, back at the mansion, the Baron is wiped out after another hard day’s water tasting – too exhausted even to play with his ball of string.
ACT TWO, SCENE ONE: The Baron is sprawled on a couch in the living room, staring disconsolately into space. From across the room, looking disheveled, her lips pursed together tightly, her eyes darting from side to side, Windy observes him with a growing sense of foreboding.
WM: Darling, this might cheer you up. I told the man down at the News-Thing-y to nominate you for a Pulitzer Prize!
BvW: (perking up) I say, darling, that’s awfully decent of you!
WM: I knew that would make you feel better, darling! (coyly) Why don’t you regale me with one of those fabulous restaurant reviews you used to write for the Thing-y?
BvW: (reaching into his blazer pocket) Funny you should ask. I happen to have one of my favorites right here. It’s the review I wrote about that delightful little French bistro on Coast Village Road – “Le Poseur Grand et Gras.” Remember? One of the fellows down at Lucky’s recommended it. Odd thing, though. They went out of business a couple of days after my review came out. (begins reading) “It was a dim and tempestuous night in Montecito when my dining companion (whom I shall refer to wittily as She Who Has Yet to Bore Me) and I entered the charming little …”
WM: (interrupting) I love it when you do that, darling!
BvW: What, darling?
WM: (giggling) You know, give the people you’re dining with those clever made-up names that make you sound so sophisticated and man-about-town-ish even if they’re just silly people nobody cares about!
BvW: That’s a little trick I picked up when I was writing for my high school newspaper in Switzerland. (exasperated) But, darling, it’s beastly to interrupt a fellow when he’s regaling! (continues reading) “My tastebuds exploded like the Bastille as I bit into a delightfully sweet and nutty Camembert amuse bouche. I was immediately transported back to the idyll of my privileged European childhood. In the demi-glace of my mind I could taste again the deliciously sweet and nutty breast milk of Gertrude, my one-eyed, trans-gender, Eurasian wet nurse whose job it was to serve me at boarding school every day during nutrition break. Darling Mumsy used to call her Gertrude the Lunch Pail! Oh, how the other twelfth-graders envied me! …”
WM: (doubtful) Are you SURE it was envy, darling?
BvW: (irritated) Of course it was, darling! Everyone envies you when you put a “von” in front of your name! Can I have my Pulitzer now?
(The Baron stifles a yawn)
WM: (alarmed) What are you doing, darling?
BvW: Yawning, darling. What does it look like?
WM: (getting hysterical) But I’ve never seen you do that before!
BvW: (thinks for a moment) You’re right, darling! I hate to say it but I really DO think you’re beginning to BORE me!
[Crash of thunder and lightning. Windy shrieks and falls to the floor in a dead faint. Fade to black.]
STAY TUNED FOR MORE
I can tell you, from long experience, that there is no shortage of people who want to be restaurant and/or movie critics, travel writers, humor columnists and the like. They're usually retirees, stay-at-home moms and middle managers. None has any journalism experience and maybe 5% can actually write.
Because the News-Press sorta looks like a real paper, poor Keri Bradford will be inundated by these people, with whom Santa Barbara is swamped. I don't envy her.
This posting shows how seriously out-of-whack the News-Press' priorities are. After the departures of Roberts, Foulsham, Hulse et al., McCaw promised us improvements in local news coverage. However, local news coverage has continued to deteriorate as reporters resign or are fired.
McCaw's solution: Hire a restaurant critic?!?
Is she trying to run a serious newspaper or a country club newsletter?
The News-Press needs solid, ethical hard-news reporters who can inform us about happenings in Santa Barbara, not someone to comment on restaurants that most readers can scarcely afford.
Has Wendy lost her mind?
I guess even the quality of the bottled water reviews have taken a hit. LOL!!!
And what if Wendy hired reporters and columnists who truly were ethical and wanting to bring back some sort of reconciliation with the community and restore some integrity to the paper? They would be derided as scabs and much worse--and judged harshly as sell-outs. There's a zero-sum game going on here.
Welcome back Spendy!
...but I digress, because I really wanted to ask why can't the new Brit gossip columnist do the restaurant reviews? It seems he has little else to do, and I say ole chap, a round up on bangers and kidney pie would be jolly good...right up there next to basil and water reviews! Finally local news we Santa Barbarians can chew on!
It IS a zero-sum game. Which means, get used to it, everyone. The News-Press won't be "back" unless Wendy sells. And she won't.
sooo... they are thinking of making the website interactive (like most papers have been for quite sometime)? their goal is to generate interest via the internet for the hardcopy version... does that mean they'll be putting the internet version up for free?
http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=659184
"The right candidates will have the ability to give our Web site a boost by helping create the kind of interactive content that will have readers wanting to come back for more and check out our print edition."
Wendy did hire some journalists with ethics who wanted to restore some integrity to the paper.
But then she fired them.
My money.
My newspaper.
My news.
My way.
Why not "Scott Steepleton" and "Staff Report" write the reviews, since he/it/whatever is writing almost everything else?
What "journalism experience" or "food or restaurant background" did the last food writer have, you know, the free lancer who is now publisher?
Didn't he only edit his high school paper and then own a now defunct nightclub?
In sleeping his way to the top, did he get his food writing job the same way he got the publisher job?
Could he even meet the ad's requirements?
OK, not that this whole N-P saga has been lacking in irony up till now, but Puhhhleeeeaaassee......
Isn't Keri Bradford the name of the Sex and the City sex columnist???
Well, it was spelled Carrie, if you remember the necklace she always wore...as if proper spelling mattered anymore, anyway.And I think it was Bradshaw, not Bradford. For a moment, though, it looked like a bit of hip, intelligent life at the np, but no...
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