“They're people who don't know what they don't know. I can't tell you how often I ... get notification on something that's being done for the first time ever. No, thank you ... do your homework. It just drives me nuts that nobody bothers doing any kind of real reporting anymore ... You wouldn't have that attitude about music criticism particularly, would you? Or if you were writing about the quality of automobiles, why is food the victim?”
Food with Mark Bittman · Food & Beverage · October 2026
Fabricant, a longtime food reporter, is talking about how much food writing is now done by bloggers and influencers rather than journalists. Her complaint is about pitches claiming something is a first when a little reporting would show it isn't. Mark Bittman pushes back afterwards, wondering whether music or car writing is really any better.
Transcript
Probably, yeah, to a large extent. Well, a lot of writing about food is not being done by what I would call journalists. Attention grabbers, maybe, bloggers, influencers. I love that term, don't you?
Oh, I hate it. Oh, yes. I hate that term so much.
And they're people who don't know what they don't know. I can't tell you how often I get, I read or get notification on something that's being done for the first time ever. No, thank you. You want some cases where it's been done before or do your homework? I mean, it just drives me nuts that nobody bothers doing any kind of real reporting anymore. It's all off the top of their head and thrown together in a pot and put in a bowl. And aren't I clever? And it's not. It just isn't. I mean, you wouldn't have that attitude about music criticism particularly, would you? Or if you were writing about the quality of automobiles, why is food the victim?
I wonder if you, I mean, I'm not saying anything about your knowledge. I wonder if we were more familiar with the world of music, quote unquote, journalism or auto-journalism, if we'd feel the same way about that. I mean, you know, publishing has become democratized for better or worse. So people can say whatever they want to say.
Well, that's because of it's all online.
Well, so my problem is that a lot of these people or some of these people are really good writers and do take the time to write well, but it's very hard to weed those people out from the greater, the bigger group because there's so much. And so how do you, how do you filter that?
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