la.foodblogging

A while back we took the LA Times to task for not including local foodbloggers in their foodblogging article. Now comes the next blunder by The Times.

While I applaud their journey into the world of blogging (direct link removed, see below), and am impressed with the Daily Dish food blog (direct link removed, see below), their foodblog links section is sadly devoid of local content.

Let’s take a look:

• A la carte - Interesting site, but completely location neutral
• Chez Pim - Excellent site, but based in SF and traveling the world.
• David Lebovitz - Based in Paris
• Eater L.A. - About LA, one point!
• Gastropoda - Based in New York,
• Grub Street - From New York Magazine!
• I (Heart) Farms - About the little farms around San Francisco and Monterey Bays
• Kiplog Food Blog - Inactive and mainly about other foodblogs
• Ruhlman.com - Living in Cleavland, professional writer about food and chefs
• Serious Eats - Based in New York, most users and contributors from NYC (also, LA Times, your link is broken)

The obligatory disclaimer: I have nothing against these sites, I read a lot of them regularly.

The scolding: LA Times, how about shifting your link focus from the East Coast over to the West? There are a host of local bloggers to choose from (feel free to steal our list on the right side of this page, even your blog is there). I had breakfast with one of your writers and told her all about the local foodblogging community. It’s not as if these local blogs are hard to find. Surely your readers would be well served by some fresh sources for restaurant tips and local finds.

Is this an unreasonable expectation?

[update] Whoops, I was reading the LA Times Terms of Service, which I would link to, but, well, just keep reading. I removed the direct links to the LA Times blogs because of their statement that:

Links to, and frames of, Latimes.com. If you operate a Web site and wish to link to Latimes.com, you may link only to the home page, www.latimes.com, and not to any other page or subdomain of Latimes.com.

I suppose until we have written permission from The Times, we’re not welcome to link directly to their blogs. Are they waiting for written permission for the local food blogs before linking to those sites? As far as la.foodblogging goes, link away! Go as deep as you want.

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.