St. Louis goes Whole Hog?

Via Google Alerts, the Cod saw where the St. Louis Post Dispatch had picked up on the Whole Hog kerfuffle. It's a curious piece. The thrust is "St. Louis native writes cookbook," but they do mention the issues w/ Smithfield and Caw Caw Creek Farm, documented here and elsewhere -- sort of: 

"Summers also works as a producer, writer and stylist for journalistic and commercial clients. One of those, the multimillion-dollar international pork producer Smithfield Packing Co., helped to sponsor the publication of "The Whole Hog Cookbook." Some of the book's recipes specifically call for Smithfield products.

The sponsorship — and the subtle way it's revealed in the book — drew online rebukes from food bloggers and from Emile DeFelice of the small-scale heritage-pig specialists Caw Caw Creek Farm in South Carolina, whose animals are pictured in the book. Summers apologized to DeFelice after he commented on a post on the Gurgling Cod, a blog that took her to task. Soon thereafter, however, the controversy was fanned when chef and multimedia food personality Anthony Bourdain condemned the sponsorship from his @NoReservations Twitter account.

During the interview for this article, Summers singled out Caw Caw Creek as a great example of a heritage-breed farm."

This is how the story looked when I saw it this morning. Earlier in the piece, there had been a link to the cookbook itself. I emailed the author of the piece, asking  "why you offered a link to Summers' own blog, but not to my post that raised the initial concern about the Smithfield connection, or Bourdain's tweet, or Eva Moore's article that fleshed out DeFelice's (quite legitimate) objection that Summers had taken pictures of his humanely raised animals to promote Smithfield's factory animals?"

Not long after, I got a pleasant response from Joe Bonwich, the article of the piece, who added these links:

"Summers apologized to DeFelice after he commented on a post on the Gurgling Cod, a blog that took her to task. Soon thereafter, however, the controversy was fanned when chef and multimedia food personality Anthony Bourdain condemned the sponsorship from his @NoReservations Twitter account.

During the interview.... etc." 

On one hand, it's nice to be able to register a complaint w/ a major metropolitan daily, and have it acknowledged and fixed. On the other hand, there are issues that remain about what, when, and how this story says what it says.

The what is probably the least complicated -- the food pages of the St. Louis Post Dispatch are not exactly Woodward and Bernstein territory, but it's odd to see the issues with this book acknowledged and dismissed, rather than a) ignored b) discussed. Let's look at the key sentences:

"The sponsorship — and the subtle way it's revealed in the book — drew online rebukes from food bloggers and from Emile DeFelice of the small-scale heritage-pig specialists Caw Caw Creek Farm in South Carolina, whose animals are pictured in the book. Summers apologized to DeFelice after he commented on a post on the Gurgling Cod, a blog that took her to task." 

Subtle? The book is not Smithfield branded on the exterior, but from the exhortations to buy pork from Smithfield in the preface, to the logos for Smithfield products on ingredient list, the effect is about as "subtle" as Jeff Gordon's relationship w/ DuPont. More importantly, Bonwich appears to miss the point of DeFelice's objection, which he spells out in his comment -- Summers used pictures of his humanely-raised animals to promote industrial feedlot pork. I do not know if DeFelice and Summers have had any communication via attorney, but Bonwich's mention that Summers apologized to DeFelice again misses the point that the book exists, and the apology does not undo or mitigate Summers's misappropriation of the images. Speaking of the materiality of print, that raises a whole other set of issues, which we can save for another post. 

Comments

[SarahinMpls]

The Gurgling Cod writes, "[T]he food pages of the St. Louis Post Dispatch are not exactly Woodward and Bernstein territory..."

Careful, Mr. Cod. The writers on the food pages beyond the NYT and WaPo have a much greater impact on far more people than the two papers I just mentioned.

[Setting aside the (quite valid) argument that blogs like yours all over the country now hold much greater influence than most MSM papers and web pages.]

My point? You dilute your writing and your thinking taking trite cheap shots. Please don't.

[Fesser]

I was not disparaging writers at papers like the Post-Dispatch, (or in MPLS) but pointing out that the life-style news sections of regional daily newspapers tend to run relatively easygoing features, rather than aggressive investigative journalism. I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule , but I'd stick with my bet that the Post-Dispatch food section produces more features along the lines of "area native writes cookbook," than hard news stories on the how our food is produced, promoted, and consumed. As the post indicates, I'm as surprised that they mentioned the Smithfield thing at all as I am disappointed that they did not take the issue seriously. I was not intending any sort of trite cheap shot, and don't think that I took one.

[bonwich]

Fesser: Yes, we do hard news stories on how food is produced, etc. We have a reporter dedicated to that beat -- who writes for our *news* department.

At our paper, and at most newspapers, there's no such thing as a "life-style news section." There's a lifestyle section, part of the features department, and a news section. (There's actually further delineation, but that's irrelevant to the point right now.)

That doesn't mean I never write about how our food is produced. Google Baetje Farms or Marcoot Jersey Creamery or Salume Beddu to check out stuff I've done on folks like Caw Caw. It's not "aggressive investigative journalism," but I'd submit that it has a parallel impact to what you would have like me to achieve by focusing more on the Smithfield issue in the Summers story.

[Mr. Sunshine]

Materiality of print?! Now you're in Mr. Sunshine's territory.