Future of Food Pages

[caroline]

Hi Russ, Great to have you to answer some of our questions. Would you care to comment on where you see food/living pages going? Do readers want to continue with the traditional fare? Or do they want a shift towards new emphases?

What is the reaction, for example, to your own introduction of food science into understanding cooking techniques? Is the kind of reporting on mad cow disease that Emily Green did for the Independent before she joined you likely to make it to food pages in the future?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Rachel

[russ parsons]

Hiya Rachel!

First of all, I'm a great believer that the best food sections are extremely specific to their communities and to their newspapers. They need to fit seamlessly. And what makes a good food section in Chicago is not what would make a good food section in Los Angeles. I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out, but what really makes a good food section is an involvement in the community it serves.

That said, I've got a couple of pet peeves that I think reflect what is going wrong with too many newspaper food sections. The first is internal: the advancement of general-purpose editors who don't know anything about the subject, are not engaged with the subject and are only waiting until the great and blessed day they are named AME Features. The second is, in a way, the opposite. And that's editors who are engaged with the subject and knowledgeable but assume that their readers are complete idiots. Nothing curdles my blood like hearing an editor saying "that's a great story, but I don't think my readers are ready for it."

I also think food sections need to be open to all different kinds of stories. The really great thing about writing about food is that you can approach the subject from so many different aspects. I do write some about the science of cooking, but I also write about agriculture and technique, and personalities and trends, and ingredients and history and a lot of other things. My cover story this week is on the sardine fishery out of San Pedro ... it's a blend of a lot of those things.