It was a rough day for New Media Publishing on Tuesday, when The Test Kitchen announced that it is withdrawing from the Eat Out Awards, just two weeks after Restaurant Mosaic at the Orient had announced the same decision from the Eat Out stage, when Chef Chantel Dartnall collected her 9th-ranked Eat Out statue. Both restaurants have sounded gracious in stating that their restaurants are stepping back, to allow younger chefs to get onto the Eat Out Top List. Continue reading →
The publishers of the Gourmet Guide 2020 have made it really difficult to write this post, in that it is not revealing its full list of 36 restaurants that received its one, two, or three plate awards on Monday, until January 2020, its website states. One can surmise that it wants the Gourmet Guide 2020 to be bought so that it can generate income. By January these Awards will have long been forgotten! Continue reading →
It was via Twitter yesterday that I picked up a link to a blogpost “Not so good today…”, written by respected food and cookbook writer and TV producer Anne Myers on her blog ‘I love Cooking’. In her story, she identified two instances of food bloggers writing irresponsibly in their recipes, not on their own blogs, but on the newly created website for MasterChef SA sponsor Woolworths, leaving the retailer with egg on its face, with two of its four guest MasterChef SA food bloggers being accused of unprofessional blogging.
To tie in with its MasterChef SA sponsorship, Woolworths created a Woolworths Pantry page on its website, and invited four food bloggers they felt to be at the top of their field to blog for them in return for payment: Alida Ryder writes the blog ‘Simply Delicious‘, and was named the top food blogger at the SA Blog Awards in 2010; Ishay Govender followed in her footsteps in winning the SA Blog Awards 2011 Food Blogger of the Year for her ‘Food and the Fabulous’ blog; Jane-Anne Hobbs is described on the Woolworths website as having ‘pioneered recipe blogging in South Africa’, now blogging on her ‘Scrumptious’ blog, and soon to have a cookbook published, she announced today; and Fritz Brand, who blogs on ‘Real Men can Cook’, is a more recent blogger with no known accolades (interesting is that Woolworths accepts his writing with grammatical errors, and he even misspells the Woolworths brand name on his own blog!). Once a week the bloggers contribute their recipes according to a set theme, and receive credit for the recipes that are featured.
Strangely, no MasterChef SA branding appears on the Woolworths Pantry pages, only the ‘Cook like a Chef’ box appearing on the recipe pages, an adaptation of the in-store banners ‘Cook like a MasterChef’. The bloggers do not comment on the MasterChef SA programme at all, even though the initial Tweets of some of these bloggers led one to believe that they would be commentators for Woolworths about the reality TV cooking programme.
Ms Myers was very kind to the two Woolworths Pantry bloggers, in not mentioning their names in her blogpost, perhaps a weakness, as their names were revealed later in the day anyway. The bloggers concerned commendably showed integrity by declaring their discredited recipes in the Comments section of Ms Myers’ blogpost, and their responses are interesting.
Fritz Brand claimed ownership of the criticised Nutella Crêpes recipe, which called for five teaspoons of salt, four of which were to be coarse salt, according to the Woolworths Pantry recipe, which Ms Myers wrote was difficult to rub through the sieve, as required in the recipe. Brand defends his recipe in the Comment on Ms Myers’ blog, stating that his recipe only called for one teaspoon of salt, and that Woolworths must have got it wrong in posting the recipe on its site! He also writes that he posted the same recipe on his own blog, without the four extra spoonfuls of salt. The four mystery spoonfuls of salt were removed from the recipe on the Woolworths Pantry website after Ms Myers’ blogpost appeared!
Interestingly, a second Tweet about food blogger ethics circulated later in the day, with a link to Ms Govender’s blog, and her blogpost ‘Food Bloggers – The Cauldrons are boiling’. Not knowing that she was under attack in Ms Myers’ blogpost, it sounded as if Ms Govender was having a general go at ‘bully’ food bloggers who do not have a ‘spirit of community’, who discredit others, who wave ‘their blog stats and self-importance around’, one not realising that she was in fact reacting to Ms Myers’ blogpost. She called for an (undefined) ‘formal qualification system’ in the ‘food blogging business’ that builds ‘sensibility and comaraderie’ (sic), implying that only qualified persons may comment about other bloggers, one suspects she was trying to say. Only on re-reading Ms Myers’ blogpost last night was it clear that Ms Govender’s blogpost was a response to Ms Myers’ very serious allegation that Ms Govender’s recipe for ‘Dark Chocolate Souffles’ had been plagiarised (an ‘almost word-for-word replica of the recipe’) from the website www.bonappetit.com. 
Ms Govender writes in her blogpost about ‘bully’ bloggers’ ‘crucifixion mentality’, without ‘calmly gathering facts and asking the involved people for their opinions’, clearly (but unfairly, in our opinion) accusing Ms Myers of this behaviour. On Ms Myers’ blogpost Ms Govender defends herself in writing that some standard recipes would appear very similar to others, that she has a background in intellectual property law and could never consider taking ideas from others, that she gets involved in community projects benefiting others, and is an example of the ‘spirit of community’. Ms Myers was harsh in her reply to Ms Govender, clearly not moved by it at all: ‘Ishay, defending yourself and pointing out your qualities and good deeds for the lesser priviledged (sic) will not change the way I feel about responsible blogging. I made it clear that I used the post in which the chocolate souffle recipe featured as an example of what I believe to be some of the causes of foodblogging’s detoriating (sic) credibility and vanishing visitors’.
As this blogpost is about food blogger ethics, it is interesting to observe how opinionated and previously fiercely independent Woolworths Pantry blogger Jane-Anne Hobbs, who describes her ‘Scrumptious‘ blog as ‘Recipes and inspiration from an independent African food blog’, has shifted in her definition of ‘independence’! In her ‘About me and Contact’ page, she writes: “By ‘independent’ I mean that my blog is not sponsored by anyone, and that I don’t endorse products or services in exchange for freebies, money or publicity. Because this blog is a freebie- and ad-free site, you can be assured that any branded product I recommend to you has been selected and paid for by me, because I think it’s interesting, tasty or exciting. Disclaimer: I earn my living by working as an independent food writer, recipe developer and social media consultant for a variety of clients. Their products and services are never mentioned on this blog. Post Script; 20 March 2012: I’ve recently been appointed one of Woolworths‘ offical (sic) bloggers for their sponsorship of the new TV series MasterChef South Africa. I’m am (sic) paid to write blogposts and recipes for Woolworths, and will be reproducing that content on this site. You’re welcome to send me press releases, or invite me to launches, but please note that I don’t accept samples, ‘gifts’, ‘freebies’, or any similar inducements“! We must commend Ms Hobbs for being the only one of the four Woolworths Pantry bloggers honest enough to declare her blogging for payment. Each of the four bloggers’ blogs carry the same Woolworths’ banner.
We predicted that MasterChef SA would be controversial, but did not expect a food blogger ‘bun fight’ to be the cause of such controversy, in addition to the MasterChef SA sponsor Robertson’s controversy, about which we reported last week. It will be interesting to see which further controversies will develop in the remaining sixteen weeks of MasterChef SA! The incident also questions the SA Blog Awards’ evaluation of top food bloggers!
POSTSCRIPT 3/4: In looking at the line ‘Cook like a Chef’ in the Woolworths ads linked to their food bloggers’ recipes one must ask again what the definition of a ‘chef’ is. All four food bloggers are recipe writers but clearly not chefs. One wonders why Woolworths would be dishonest in its advertising in projecting the bloggers to a more glorified status and so mislead their customers.
POSTSCRIPT 3/4: Woolworths Pantry has credited Bon Appetit magazine with the ‘inspiration’ for Ms Govender’s dark chocolate soufflé recipe subsequent to the publishing of Ms Myers’ blogpost, confirming that Ms Myers was correct in what she wrote!
POSTSCRIPT 4/4: For Week 3 on the Woolworths Pantry website, only recipes by food bloggers Alida Ryder and Jane-Anne Hobbs are featured, with none by Ishay Govender and Fritz Brand. The photograph of the four food bloggers is also no longer featured!
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage
Despite posting an invitation via Twitter to the SA Blog Awards organising committee of JP Naude, Dave Duarte and Chris Rawlinson to respond to our criticism of the SA Blog Awards 2010, we received nothing more than a not-so-understandable Direct Message on Twitter from Chris Rawlinson: “I think if you had taken a few mins to call me you may have most of what you said is simply not true. Hope all well. Chris”
In addition, the organising committee posted a response, two days after our blog post appeared, to the criticism documented not only on our blog, but also written by many other bloggers (see via a Google search), on their website www.sablogawards.com, in the News section, and not on their Home Page, where it should have been featured. Massive criticism of the Awards organisation also swamped Twitter on Sunday! One would have thought that the organisers would have sent the response to the criticism to each of the nominees by e-mail, to win their favour for the 2011 Awards!
The following issues raised have not been addressed in the reply of the Organising Committee:
1. The change in rules in the Awards competition over the two month period
2. The exclusion from the Awards dinner for the Top 10 finalists, originally indicated to be open to all
3. Voting at nomination stage
4. Organisers’ names not revealed
5. Judges names not revealed, and questionable capabilities of some judges, in not being bloggers
6. Poor standard of organisation generally
7. No communication about the rules to those that entered
8. Massive changes between the 2009 and 2010 competition procedure, categories, prizes and dinner inclusion/exclusion
9. Sponsorship of some categories, but not all
10. Role of Afrigator
11. The controversial choice of www.watkykjy.co.za as Best Blog in South Africa.
12. Not mentioned previously is the male dominance of the organising committee (3 males), executive judges (5 males) and judges (48 of the 64 were male). I would like to predict that there are more female than male bloggers, and therefore they may not have been able to appreciate the female touch. We suggest a more balanced gender distribution for 2011! From what I could see at the Vista Bar, there were definitely more male than female winners.
We are delighted to read that each of the Top 10 finalists in each category will receive a ‘digital badge’ to feature on their blogs. We also acknowledge their salute to bloggers and the great work that they do, and the thanks expressed to all participants.
What is really obvious from the reply is that traditional media such as PR featured more strongly than social media in marketing the SA Blog Awards, an absolute contradiction, given that blogging is the foundation of social media marketing. The Twitter presence was poor, and the SA Blog Awards should have had a blog!
This is the official response from the SA Blog Awards to criticism received:
“On behalf of the SA Blog Awards we would like to thank all of the participants who contributed this year. These include the public, the nominees, the South African Bloggers and the judges. A special thanks to News 24, our other sponsors and suppliers and partners, without who the awards would not have been possible.
A tremendous effort was made this year to move the SA Blog Awards to a new level. We feel that this has been accomplished. Where there are a few criticisms in the blogging industry, we welcome these and will look to learn from those that are factually correct. In addition we will shortly be implementing our review process, which we hope all will participate in.
The SA Blog Awards has been run by volunteers and goodwill up to now and the time and effort has been quite taxing. The new CEO, JP Naude, stepped in after a casual conversations with Chris Rawlinson and Dave Duarte, and recognising the potential of the SA Blog Awards began implementing new support structures, media policies and other processes on a very short notice, and as such was still saddled with some systems which had been in place in the previous years. JP is well aware of the current flaws and has already, in a very short time added enormous additional value. JP immediately recognised that the first priority was to re-establish the credibility and integrity of the SA Blog Awards.
Contrary to what has been written in the public space regarding the nomination, registration and voting phases. (sic) We made every effort to notify bloggers to register; we did this via the Afrigator database, email, twitter and notifications on our site. In addition we notified former voters of the nomination phase. During the nomination phase, the public vote phase and the judging phase we continually asked for nominees to register their contact details with us. After all phases had closed we still continued asking nominees to register their contact details. To date we are still struggling to get final correct details, in some cases nominees entered incorrect email addresses. During this process we manually went to the blogs and looked for contact details or mailed them from their site requesting details. Where we had contact details we used them to the best of our ability.
When we talk about moving the blog awards up to a new level, we mean an improved voting process, more awareness for the bloggers of South Africa, better criteria for the judges to understand, and ensuring an equal platform for all nominees. All of these were done, but will again be reviewed in order to find the best possible formula.
We asked judges which were subject related to the category to judge. This means the category was judged by an expert in the subject matter of that category which hopefully will assist the bloggers with better recognition, should they choose to seek endorsements or financial support for their blog.
This year the SA Blog Awards was supported by News24 who have applied their online support for the bloggers. In addition the SA Blog Awards radio partner, Good Hope FM, supplied radio coverage pre -and post the event. Further has been garnered from the SABC News, SAFM, Cape Talk, 702, eTV News, The Digital Edge and several other online publications. All this was for the first time arranged with the kind support of Atmosphere PR, which added a much more professional dimension than in previous years.
As a sponsor and supplier to the SA Blog Awards, Ogilvy Cape Town added their support with additional fun and creativity using a digital photographic concept on the night. These social media pictures have been published and will surely bring enjoyment to all bloggers and other viewers.
Our emphasis this year was on the readers of the blogs, with the judges in place to act as the guardians of the categories. We believe the readers of the blogs are of great importance and as such gave them a greater say in the voting process. The public vote counted for 70% and the judges vote 30%. This led us to the 24 hr voting system. This system allowed for blogs with regular readers to show their appreciation, and as such the blogs which have a loyal regular following rose to the top. Falling in line with our policy to continue striving for a better formula this process will be reviewed.
We increased the number of active voters in excess of 300% from 2009 to 2010.
Our judges were given several criteria to look at, these included, Design, Content Quality, Reader Engagement, Relevance to the category, and Overall Experience. These are factors that we believe make a good blog and bring the reader to the forefront. A factor we believe the judges must prioritise during scoring.
Finally we asked an executive judging panel to look at the winners of each category in order to determine an overall winner. The Executive Judging panel then scored the top three blogs they thought were most deserving. These scores were compiled and an end result calculated to indicate the final overall winner. The results were conclusive.
The night itself was an overwhelming success bar one or two glitches. The night was invite only, this meant we arranged an event which was limited in numbers, however free to the nominees and invited guests. The venue, The One & Only, we believe was befitting the stature of the event and was appropriate considering that we were recognising the best bloggers in South Africa. Furthermore the night was well arranged, sound was excellent, light, and multimedia quality was good. In addition, our MC Mumzy was also exceptional. We would have loved to have all top ten nominees at the awards, but during the 2010 stage this was just not logistically or financially feasible.
In terms of prizes we have had queries on several fronts, many say prizes are not necessary and that the prize is the prestige of winning, some say there should be financial incentives. Again we will engage our audience and ask the question. Which do they prefer? Our overall winner received an iPad from News 24, a Black Berry from Vodacom and vouchers from, Rocket seed, Sunglass Hut and Obox. In addition we commissioned a fantastic glass sculpture as the overall award, again a step up from years before.
The category winners each received a glass award engraved with the details of that category as well as the aforementioned vouchers. Each top ten finalist will still receive a digital badge to showcase on their blog, with category winners, and the overall winner receiving relevant winners badges.
Finally we engaged local computer wholesaler Infinitix to supply us with PC equipment for a charity of our choosing. We chose the community centre in Bridgetown. This community is plagued by violence, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and several other social evils. Marlon Parker from Rlabs is involved with this community centre, and they have made a significant improvement in changing the lives of many within this community using social media. We trust that the PC equipment we handover to Marlon will help him with his continued effort to use social media to better the lives of those suffering under the hardships they live in.
We once again urge the bloggers of South Africa to stand by the SA Blog Awards and work towards improving the process together with us. The respect of the blogging community lies in the hands of the bloggers.
At the SA Blog Awards we will continue to seek, recognise and reward the best bloggers in South Africa. Our work is however not finished. We will keep the pulse of the SA Blog Awards alive in South Africa constantly.
Once again congratulations to the bloggers of South Africa whether good or bad, big or small, we are proud of the fact that you are blogging. You are the new voice of society”.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com