Here’s another mainstream press article on food blogging – this time in The  Australian.

Since we started our blog, I figure this is the third such article I have come across.

I always like reading them, but as someone who has a foot firmly in both camps, if that is the right word, I am also always bemused.

In this case, I was particularly taken with this paragraph concerning A.A. Gill, restaurant reviewer for London’s Sunday Times:

A.A. Gill, who was in Australia at the same time as White, is more direct. “I don’t read them; I would never read them,” he asserts. “As if I have the time.” For him, the notion that bloggers are doing it for free out of a “love for food” is a falsehood. “Of course they’re getting paid,” he says. “They go to all these events – that’s a form of payment. They get put up in nice places – that’s a form of payment. What they are effectively doing is funding their hobby and not doing it particularly well.”

And this one, with quotes from Natascha Mirosch, food writer for Brisbane’s Courier-Mail.

For many in traditional media, though, the encroachment of bloggers onto their territory is worrying. “I’d be wary about following their recommendations,” says Mirosch, “because you don’t know how reliable they are or whether they have their own agenda. Often bloggers don’t think they are bound by the same rules and conventions of journalism.”

As if so-called professional food writers don’t have agendas. And as if the food pages of regular newspapers aren’t larded with pieces fuelled by freebies and press releases. Ha!

As with the earlier articles, I simply don’t recognise myself or the bloggers I know.

For sure, these comments are applicable to some bloggers. But a long way short of all or even most.

As a blogger, I would wish for more perceptive and nuanced analysis of food blogging and its bloggers.

As an employee of mainstream journalism, I should probably know better.

For a significantly more strident discussion on The Australian article, check out the post at Fitzroyalty.