Food & Wine Magazine: Best U.S. Coffee Bars
Posted by TheShot on 24 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Local Brew
In the name-dropping department, the September issue of Food & Wine magazine included a brief article on a select assortment of “classic and new places around the country with the most fanatical devotees” in the world of quality coffee: Where to Go Next: Best U.S. Coffee Bars | Food & Wine. Included on the list is SF’s Blue Bottle Cafe and a smattering of the usual suspects from around the country: including Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters, and a few places we’re overdue to visit — such as L.A.’s Lamill Coffee.
Spin, however, can be a funny thing. For example, The Ithaca Journal (NY) interpreted the inclusion of local pride, Gimme! Coffee, in Food & Wine’s unscientific list with this headline: Gimme! Coffee voted best U.S. coffee bar by Food & Wine Magazine | theithacajournal.com | The Ithaca Journal. Apparently the ace reporters behind The Ithaca Journal are bucking for a Pulitzer in investigative reporting, given that they were able to discover both that there was a “voting system” behind Food & Wine’s article and that Gimme! was ranked first on this list — while no other reporter nor reader has been able to detect the existence of either.
3 Comments »
on 24 Aug 2008 at 12:36 pm -05:00T 1.espressoed said …
Spin CAN be a funny thing. Outside of the headline itself, which is written by editors not reporters, the Ithaca Journal article indicates nothing of the sort that you report. The very first sentence of the article states that Gimme! has been named ONE OF the 10 best in the US. There’s no discussion of a voting system, nor that Gimme! was #1. What the headline is stating is a truth in the figurative sense and common English language usage: In effect Food & Wine has cast its “vote” for Gimme! as one of the best by including it in their article. Could the headline be more precise? Sure. Does it truly mislead in any way? Not really.
on 24 Aug 2008 at 1:37 pm -05:00T 2.TheShot said …
Good point about the difference between editors and reporters. I know of many reporters who both enjoy and lament how some editors have no clue about the subject matter and yet are masters of the one-line pun when developing their heds and subheds.
Though in The Ithaca Journal’s case, the editor sure took plenty of liberties with what their fellow staffers wrote — because , at least IMO, it’s very misleading. “Voted best U.S. coffee bar” means only one thing in our vernacular.
For any actual “vote”, the Food & Wine list doesn’t contain more than one coffee bar per region. And to cast huge doubts on its credibility, Seattle is glaringly absent: no Zoka nor any of the V’s.
As for the headline stating a truth in a figurative sense, one has to imagine November 2000: every national paper is running stories about Bush, Gore, Florida’s supreme court, and hanging chads, and meanwhile The Ithaca Journal editorial team leads with the headline of “Ralph Nader voted into U.S. presidency”.
on 24 Aug 2008 at 8:23 pm -05:00T 3.espressoed said …
I dunno, maybe I’m just giving the Ithaca community too much credit for general “smarts” and a greater likelihood that they’ll read the complete article rather than just note the headline, and too little criticism to the staff of the IJ. I must confess my senses have been “desensitized” to journalistic quality to a degree because I’m no longer convinced that it really exists to any great extent anymore–even papers like the NYT are now chock full of bad writing. At any rate, though we differ on our judgment of this issue I truly enjoy your work here. Thanks.