LA Times, Learning to Blog, Still Un-Local
Friday, September 7, 2007 9:51A 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.
Atwater Village Newbie says:
September 9th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Silly LA Times. How do they really expect to enforce their anti-deep-linking policy? Oh wait, I know. By making deep-link content disappear. Bravo!
Jonah says:
September 9th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I can’t imagine that they really would enforce that term of service. I am assuming that it’s left over from early days of protectionist content where sites thought that they were giving something up by allowing deep links. Many have long figured out that it is to their benefit to allow other sites to drive traffic to their pages.
Pauline says:
September 10th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Hmm… If LA Times did have some way of checking sites that link to them, then maybe by including direct links to their pages will finally get the staff there to notice lafb!
Taste-Buzz says:
September 11th, 2007 at 9:50 am
At the end of the day, as long as la.foodblogging / digesty provide linkage, I’m fine. I have low expectations when it comes to the LAT being relevant in terms of blogging.
Jonah says:
September 11th, 2007 at 10:32 am
True, I actually have no expectations for the LA Times blogs, nor am I trying to tell them what they should do. I am trying to tell them what they could do. I am obviously biased, but I think that the readers of the LA Times foodblog would be genuinely well served to discover the terrific local foodblogs out there.
Ted says:
September 11th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Def. one of the most retarded linking policies I’ve ever seen in my life. What a bunch of n00bs!
Meredith Artley, executive editor, latimes.com says:
September 28th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
We confess to having a Terms of Service policy that was out of whack, and we should have been paying more attention. So while this news wasn’t welcome, I thank you for calling us out nonetheless. It’s been fixed now.
Jonah says:
September 28th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Thanks for clearing that up Ms. Artley, and for stopping by to let us know about it.
H.C. says:
October 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Not sure if LA Times took heed of this post or just been getting other “critiques” of their linked blogs & sites, but they listened, as LA Eater spilled the beans about:
http://la.eater.com/archives/2007/10/12/blog_love.php
& Food editor Leslie Brenner’s own blog post on it:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/2007/10/blog-roll-pleas.html
No love for my blog though (or LA Digesty, as far as I can tell).