August 2006
Food Blogs
by Celia Cheng
CRAVINGS
Bamboo Steamed Chinese Sausage & Taro Rice
Sweet-N-Tart
Focaccia col Formaggio
Dining in the town of Camogli in Liguria on the Italian Riviera
Sesame bagels
St. Viateur Bagels (Montreal)
Josh Friedland is organized to an extent I find mind-boggling. The Food Section is a monster of a blog with a wealth of information but structured in a way that’s easy to manage and navigate. As its sub-header states, The Food Section publishes “All the news that’s fit to eat.” Josh’s blog is a hybrid of links and essays. He’ll comb through all his resources to post news linking to other sources and at the same time maintains the editorial side of his blog that talks more personally about his own experiences.
As the Director of Communications at The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, Josh has definitely mastered good communication skills. The web allows you to play around and not be serious, and that’s how Josh started The Food Section. As time went on, he wanted to build on it and developed a more systematic way to update content. The setup now is very clear: On the right side of the page, “appetizers” are links to recent food-related tidbits. In the center of the page are recent essays. The latest addition is “shopping list” on the left of the page, which is a list of interesting food-related shopping items &mdash a very welcome addition to the site.
Josh explains that what’s missing in magazines and newspapers are links to competitors. People who are interested in a certain subject matter want to learn everything about it, so why not give them all the information? This is exactly what Josh does. He’s taking full advantage of the technology of blogging and gives people all the information he can get his hands on. And people love it. In fact, the site is so well set up now that he doesn’t need to spend more than two to three hours a day on it to keep up. Guest editors who contribute posts to the site also help ease his workload. His hard work on the setup of the blog has paid off, especially now that he needs more time at home since Josh has recently become a dad.
The variety of subject matter within the realm of food on The Food Section gives it a lot of flexibility. If Josh is tired, and doesn’t have time to cook and the take-out wasn’t that good, he can always link to someone else’s interesting article. By not limiting himself to one topic, he can always find something to post. There are so many different ways to talk about food, so why limit yourself? If his blog had just focused on one aspect of food, whether on dining out or cooking, Josh might have had more trouble staying afloat in the blogging world. Pete Wells mentions in his Food & Wine article this March, “ In the Belly of the Blog,” that he finds blogs that bundle worthwhile food writing a truly valuable service. He also points out that The Food Section does a great job at this. Sites that bundle information are considered aggregators or filters. They are popular because they do a much better job than search engines do at finding relevant information on specific topics. I stand with his other fans and thank God for Josh and The Food Section — a tremendous undertaking and a truly worthwhile resource for all food lovers!
