So many tears: RSgate

I must thank Tom Wark and a legion of commenters (85 89 comments so far, many more to come) for not allowing me to leave the laptop all this livelong day.  Or for not allowing this Rodney Strong - Good Grape experiment in coordinated wine-reviewing to die.  I don't really believe any great breach in ethics or propriety was actually committed, but I tell you it's been fascinating to read the range of opinions and feel the heat of emotion that the thread has ignited.  Tom's post (was it only yesterday?) hit the collective nerve in a big way.  Why?

As far as I understand it, this is what happened.  (Jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong.)

1. Jeff at Good Grape wanted to conduct an experiment, to see if a coordinated, limited-time wine-reviewing program would have any effect on sales and/or the treatment of said wine in the mainstream print media.  (See his and others' recent comments on GG here.) He placed no constraints on the content of the piece or judgment of the wine.

2. Jeff solicited a list of bloggers that he picked, paying out the parameters of the effort: a commitment to review the wine (a new release by Rodney Strong) in order

to get the sample and do the blog article. A major attraction was supposed to be that bloggers would get this wine to review before mainstreams.  The ascendancy of the wine blogger!

NB: Not everyone contacted became a participant; those bloggers appear to have had other things impinging on their time, felt ethical qualms, etc.  No one was cajoled, threatened or demeaned if they didn't participate.

3. Participating bloggers got the wine, posted their reviews, and there was the end of it.  So they thought.

L'affaire RS has popped up on a number of blogs, on Twitter, on the Open Wine Consortium, etc., etc.  Leave it to Mr. Wark to come out hard against the initiative on this one.  I say on my blogroll that he "kicks butt and takes names."  I think Tom has integrity and speaks with authority, sitting as he does at the junction of blogging and PR. He has to be attentive every day to the line between interested and disinterested communication.  Whether or not he came down too hard on Jeff and the participating bloggers is another question. 

Judging from all the howls of pain and outrage, I'd say he did the right thing at the right time.  Wine-blogging is becoming more mainstream, and eventually we will see a serious diminution of the mainstream print media's influence on reviews -- and on the wines that find or don't find favor with the public.  Ergo there will be more temptations offered to bloggers : junkets to glamorous locations, lots of yummy free food and wine, etc., etc.

Sadly and amazingly enough, I've already seen on Twitter that one well-known blogger and participant in Good Grape's experiment has decided to blog no more, at least for a while.  To that end I offer a bit of advice to steel the tender ones to the real world (adapted from a comment I left on Fermentation):

[This brouhaha] is fun if:

1) you don't take yourself or your sphere of influence too seriously, a failing that is common whether or not you bloviate about ethics

2) you don't have an excessively thin skin (a trait "real" journalists quickly lose)

3) you think that conflict is often necessary for things to progress

Anyone who thinks that blogging is all about community and camaraderie isn't paying attention, and I don't just mean in this affair.  It's a competitive albeit enclosed universe. 

A lot of good points have been raised by both (or more than two?) sides.  But there's been a ton of posturing too.

Sorry, ladies & germs, it's still just blogging, for the vast majority of us a not-for-profit activity, an avocation, a hobby. Since I'm not beholden to anyone and make not a dime off my blog, let me assure you that if I'm displeased with some one or thing, I'll be prompt in telling them to fuck off, and have done so on several occasions. I'd suggest that those with hurt feelings do likewise and end their contribution to this drama.

Toughen up, people.  If you have any dreams of moving mainstream, you'd better get over your feelings of martyrdom and injury.  And please do not act as though you didn't already understand this.

Comments

[1WineDude]

Interesting take!

But it's kind of late.

I like Tom (and Steve H.). But neither of them checked with any of the participants on the facts.

Whoops!

So, I think the blogger dropout to whom you refer is NOT dropping out because of a few hurt feelings.

It's because hell is the absence of reason, and right now the reaction of some of the blogosphere to this is hell.

Would've taken not a jot of effort for either of them to contact one of us to confirm.

Whoops.

And by not doing any fact-checking whatsoever, what people are missing here is that if Rodney Strong gets a bad taste in its mouth in terms of working with bloggers in this way, because we have come off as group of uncoordinated, sophomoric monkeys who can't refrain from flinging poo at each other, then we won't long be celebrating the ascendancy of wine blogging.

Whoops...

[Strappo]

Thanks for the comment. It's kind of late because even I like to mull things over for a time.

I think that tender feelings are precisely the point. You cannot ever control others' reactions or feelings but you can buck up and deal with your own.

The nature of the Net and of blogging, a pure Net phenom, makes it almost inevitable that this sort of shit storm breaks every now and then. It's part of the fun, this rough-and-tumble, and it does prepare you well for the mainstream, I believe. If you can make it here...

[Fredric Koeppel]

Strappo: thank you for using "disinterested" correctly.

Dude: you do sort of have a way with words.

[Strappo]

Thank you, FK, and blessed be ye. I may not be showered with samples or given awards or get mainstream mention, but I try, God knows I try. (sob!)

[fredric koeppel]

you can take a guy outta the classroom, but you can't take the classroom outta the guy.

[1WineDude]

Totally agree - the shit storms do happen.

My opinion is that this one was preventable. All Tom had to do was send an email beforehand.

He didn't. Probably on purpose (he's a very smart guy, after all), to cause a shit storm and drive some traffic.

Thomas - I think you're spot on with your comment on Tom W.'s blog:

"A journalist does not accept preconditions, especially from a PR agent, to write something, whether that something is a story or a review..."

I certainly would never argue that a writer shouldn't follow a code of ethics/conduct. My point is only that this shit storm is based on the assumption that a few of us wine bloggers agreed to writing conditions **with a winery** for providing us a sample.

And that patently did NOT happen. We agreed them **with an editor**, which I think happens (ethically?) all the time in mainstream media.

I can take the heat (check out the WS Forums for proof of that! :-). What I can't take is the disrespect I've been shown in having the facts ignored - it's the equivalent of telling me that I'm not believed. In other words, I'm a liar.

And that is simply bullshit.

[1WineDude]

"Dude: you do sort of have a way with words."

Thanks, Fred. Was it the use of "flinging poo" that won you over? 'Cause that's one of my personal faves. ;-)

Fred, Tom, Terrence - I still really dig your blogs. Even after the shit storm!

[Fredric Koeppel]

"flinging poo"!!!!! that was exactly it!

[1WineDude]

I knew it!

I'm on to you, Fred... I'm onto you...

:-)

[Strappo]

Joe, baby, you don't think Tom did this just to drive traffic? I might do that, but I think he really was bothered by the thin red line aspect of the affair. Whatever his motives, I still maintain he did us all a service by raising the point and stating it in such forceful terms. Yes, I guess it was good for his site traffic too.

BTW, I think the cast of "Scrubs" already established that "it all comes down to poo." Quite profound.

[1WineDude]

Not *just* to drive traffic. I wouldn't contend that.

But he didn't go out of his way to check any facts about the 'experiment' with Jeff, me, the winery, etc. Guy's too smart for that - it feels at least a little bit calculated (to me).

I could be wrong, of course - I've never met Tom personally. But we seem to share some measure of incorrigible spirit so maybe I can see into his brain a little bit...

[Strappo]

Hint: Don't call him "Fred." Umbrage will be taken.

[1WineDude]

Whoops! Sorry - all "Fred"s hereby recanted, to be replaced with "Dear Sir".

[justine]

Strappo, (my love), if I may venture a 'hmmm', it does indeed hmmm to me that a bit of poo was flung and too may people scurried off to get their fans. I too would opine that no great crime has occurred (but I would say that as we're doing a very similar tasting exercise), but of far greater concern to me is this: blogging is an organic thing, and it's going to grow in the way it will. There are no rules, it self-regulates and it feeds it's own appetite. This kind of public scrapping and posturing doesn't taste good, and it loses sight of what blogging is about (at least for today). It's personal opinion, pure and simple. It can be applied in many ways, but when we start to bolt on 'journalism', 'PR', 'marketing', then some perspective of that pure and simple thang is being lost. In my personal opinion, obviously.

[Strappo]

Very wise words, dear Justine (my love, my poppet). Tell me, has anyone besides you been following this thing in Espana? What's the take on it?

Regards to all my amici.

[Thomasina]

How are you. After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
I am from Singapore and learning to write in English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "You have no order generic imitrex problem doing it when you masturbate."

:D Thanks in advance. Thomasina.

[TH]

Thomasina, you slut, it's nice to exit on a high note.