A month ago Menu Pages reported on a StoveTop Stuffing promotion in which hot, steaming samples of stuffing would be stuck in your face at bus stops, the assumption being that Prohibition is still on and therefore no one is going to be so hung over that they will immediately coat the interior of their bus shelter with puke at the sight of mealy, chewed-looking hot stuffing at 8 am.

Now The New York Times has inexplicably declared this promotion one of the best things Madison Avenue did all year.  Let’s think for a minute about what this promotion involves.  A cup of hot stuffing, a spoon, and someone passing it out.  (Okay, and some cooks somewhere in a rented banquet kitchen.)  And here is how the New York Times describes the collection of great powers necessary to pull off this feat:

Agencies: Draft FCB, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies; JCDecaux North America, part of JCDecaux; and MediaVest, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe.

Does this sound like an industry that could turn on a dime, get some people out on the street, and boost your sales pronto? Or does it sound like one that started planning this work of genius in 2005, and still wasn’t sure if they were ready to hit the street this year or needed to do some more focus group testing of the concept and some more drawings of the cup design and some more work on the tagline and some more Powerpoints about overall stuffing consumption trends?  Don’t answer that.  And don’t shove stuffing in my face at bus stops.

Presidents are not, generally, noted for what they eat. President Bush is, so far as I can recall, associated with exactly one pretzel, lodged in the presidential throat; President Clinton was known to have a weakness for junk food, but never from anywhere distinguished enough that he made it nationally famous; Bush senior ate pork rinds and disdained broccoli, although it later turned out he didn’t and that was just his advisers trying to make him look average-joeish (“Pork rinds, can’t get enough, ate ’em all the time in Skull & Bones”).  Before that—hard to imagine Nixon, Eisenhower, Hoover as anything but steak and potato guys, though Taft looked like a guy who could down two dozen oysters as prelude to a rack of lamb.  And, of course, Martin Van Buren made a mean huevos rancheros.

But then there’s Barack Obama, who is rapidly becoming the Calvin Trillin of presidents, to judge by his alleged love for various local Chicago joints, often obscure. (This despite the fact that he has the physique of a tofu-eatin’ sprouts-lover.) His Hyde Park home is supposed to have a 1000-bottle wine cellar (no reports on how full it is), and his globetrotting childhood could make a Travel Channel show, since he admits in Dreams From My Father to having eaten dog, snake and grasshoppers as a boy in Indonesia. (Where was the attack ad on that one? “Barack Obama says he wants a dog for his family… but is it to play catch with, or to braise in a burgundy cream sauce?”) He can pronounce “arugula,” and “nuclear” so it doesn’t rhyme with it. Forget the race barrier… have we elected our first foodie president?

After seeing “Obama Eats Here” T-shirts on the staff at Hyde Park’s Medici Bakery, I’ve decided to keep a running tally of Obama-approved foods and food establishments, on the theory that it won’t take long for it to be longer than the LTHForum Great Neighborhood Restaurants award list, and to use them plus my Foodar to determine the pressing question of the day: Obama, First Foodie or Mere Expense Account Forkpusher?

Medici Bakery. T-shirts say “Obama Eats Here,” though no confirmation from press reports or the transition team.  On the foodie side, a wide array of Frenchy baked goods.  On the non-foodie side, when I pronounced “Levain” in the French manner (“leuhrrvehhnhhh”), they didn’t know what I meant until I finally gave in and said “Luh-vane,” like it was the name of the woman who does your perm.  Non-foodie.

Spiaggia. Chicago’s priciest Italian restaurant is, at least lately, Obama’s favorite for date night with the future first lady; they’ve been there at least three times this year, for Valentine’s Day, back in June, and in early November. Sure, it’s a great restaurant, but liking Italian isn’t exactly staking out a bold new position away from the other candidates.  If he was eating offal at Riccardo Trattoria or Mado, that’d be another matter, but lots of high-priced Loop attorneys eat at Spiaggia.  Non-foodie.

Topolobampo. Alleged to be another longtime favorite, though there are no press reports of them actually going there lately. Okay, so that makes two restaurants where they choose the more expensive half of a two-part restaurant. Did I mention that both Obamas have been high-priced Loop attorneys?  Still, admiring Bayless’s nuevo Mex is a cut above liking Italian food.  Foodie.

Sepia. The same article says Michelle likes Sepia these days.  Lots of people do.  Not foodie.

Italian Fiesta Pizzeria. Kenwood area pizza joint is apparently the Obama’s go-to delivery pizza place. Like good Chicagoans, they know that the okay delivery pizza that’s five minutes away is better than the great delivery pizza that’s twenty minutes away.  Foodie, because true foodies know when not to insist on foodieism.

Kua ‘Aina. Hawaiian burger joint where Pico Iyer of Time (who didn’t name it, but Serious Eats figured out what it had to be) had lunch with Obama… and they ate avocado burgers. (“Barack Obama says he can relate to the problems of ordinary Americans. But when he eats a hamburger, he puts an avocado on it. We can’t afford a president who puts something where you can’t even tell if it’s a fruit or a vegetable on his hamburger…”) Desecrating an American classic is very non-foodie, except when it works.  I can’t see this working if you’re not already lulled into a persistent vegetative state by being in the tropics.  In the cold gray of a Chicago winter, this would look ridiculous.  Non-foodie.

Manny’s. You’re not going to get very far in Chicago politics not eating at Manny’s Coffee Shop aka deli; I’ve never gone there and not seen either a pol I recognized, or someone I recognized had to be a pol (you can tell, believe me). Obama’s recent appearance was quite an event. This is the kind of place that brings out the inner foodie in non-foodies, so foodie.

Macarthur’s. Soul food cafeteria on the west side is talked about in The Audacity of Hope. So, Mr. President-Elect, you live near Army & Lou’s and Cafe Valois, yet you trek all the way over to the west side for your collard greens and smothered pork chops? That’s so totally foodie.

No doubt about it.  Dude’s a foodie.  We will follow this story as it develops.

UPDATE: Welcome, Huffington Post readers and other link-followers. Check out the main purpose of Sky Full of Bacon by clicking on “Video Podcasts” in the “Categories” menu at right.

So lots of updates from readers (hey, I didn’t miss Italian Fiesta, and note the reference to Cafe Valois as well).  Here’s what more we know:

Harold’s Chicken Shack (as pointed out by its primary chronicler).  A very Trillinesque choice.  Totally foodie.

Roy’s. I suppose it’s inevitable that someone born in Hawaii (and yes, my comment about eligibility is a joke, as is my dogmatic anti-avocado stand, though I still wouldn’t put one of them things on mah burger) would go for the only upscale Hawaiian in the universe.  Not foodie.

12 Bones, Asheville, NC.:

At 12 Bones, he greeted diners and took ribs, brisket, pulled pork, corn pudding and sweet tea back to his motorcade.

“That’s a lot of food. That’s not all for me,” he told staff.

Oh sure. Not all for me. Buddy, I been there, don’t kid a kidder. Foodie!

Bentoh’s. Having recently been to Springfield, I wondered if he’d have a favorite spot. I don’t know Bentoh’s, though. Judgement pending.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Here’s the link to the podcast. It’s the last segment, about 10 minutes from the end.

David Hammond, whose audio podcasts on WBEZ’s 848 are one of those things that made me want to do video podcasts (so I wouldn’t be doing the same thing he already did well), has one on gluttony tomorrow this morning.

Naturally, he turned to me for my viewpoint.  You can listen on 848 tomorrow this morning or evening, or I’ll post a podcast link once it’s empodded.

I am also, to my surprise, quoted in this story about Hammond’s Thanksgiving heresies.  And apparently Steve Dahl talked about it on his show, so who knows, I may be quoted there too. (UPDATE: Yes, I just listened to it—and that’s some mighty compelling radio, listening to Dahl read from a suburban paper and make Andy Rooneyesque gibes about how wrongheaded the world is these days—and I am mocked, all too briefly. Hey Steve, I worked with Larry Lujack in about 1989, he says hi.)

To jump to the most recent Sky Full of Bacon video podcasts, click on Video Podcasts under Categories at right.

Sometimes I think I spend too much time on these podcasts, then I watch something like this and feel like a slacker.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

A couple of notes about being a small, one-man media outlet in this fast-changing world, rooted in my corner of the world (Chicago foodblogging/podcasting) but surely applicable to any niche market in the new media world. If you’re mainly interested in food, feel free to scroll to the next post.

Data point #1: I commented on a blog post at a major Chicago media outlet’s food blog on either Friday night or Saturday morning. Then I thought, why did I just bother doing that? No one will approve the comment till at least Monday. (I was correct.)

Data point #2: Another major Chicago media outlet does food videos too, not exactly like mine. They host them on Vimeo too. So I checked their stats. Here they are, with a subscriber base in the six figures and celebrity chefs (okay, I have those now, but not until recently) and all the power of cross-promotion. And their videos… draw way fewer viewers than mine do. As in, the one I put up 5 days ago has already outdrawn the one they put up a month ago. As in, my most-viewed one has had six or seven times as many as most of theirs.

I point this out not to gloat but to make a serious point. For all that newspapers and magazines are going around bemoaning the impending porcelain swirl of their industry, these factoids suggest to me that they still haven’t grasped how to harness the power of new media and build an audience online. The things I know how to do that they still don’t, quite, include:

• Post frequently. Blogging isn’t even the main point of Sky Full of Bacon, the videos are, and yet I manage to get 3 or 4 posts up a week. Where oftentimes the bigger media, with contributing food blog staffs of anywhere from 2 to 10 people, manage to get… 3 or 4 posts up a week. If you can get a daily paper or a weekly magazine out, yet can’t manage to post new content online on a regular schedule, that says where your priorities still are.

• Post on an audience-timely schedule. I became acutely aware of when most people are at their computers while helping run LTHForum. It was dead till about 9:20 am, busiest from then till just before noon, dead from noon to about 1:30, moderately active till about 4:30, dead till about 7, moderately active from 7 to 9, then low but steady until past midnight.

So what’s the blogging schedule at most big media publications? I suspect it’s basically like this:
10:30 am: writer turns in blog post to editor
4:30 pm: harried editor turns from putting out fires on print edition to email box, reads and finally approves post
4:57 pm: post goes up just as audience shuts down computers and goes home

• Interact with your readers. The name of the game is reader loyalty— they have to want to come back. What makes them want to come back? Interaction. They come back to see if someone else responded to what they said. They come back to see if the writer of the original piece flatters them with attention. So how do you expect to build that if 1) you can’t even approve a comment in less than 3 days and 2) your writers are too busy on print assignments to check back and interact on the blog?

Fact is, I can’t remember on most of the big media blogs when there’s even been the least little sign that the bylined writers even read the comments. Which is why when a similar topic goes up at a big media outlet and at LTHForum, frequently the big media outlet with thousands of paid subscribers will be stuck at 3 or 4 responses when the LTHForum thread is on to its 3rd or 4th page. There may be far more readers at the former, but there’s far more positive reinforcement at the latter, and that’s what builds audience loyalty and keeps them coming back.

That’s why, even though I don’t get many comments, I take the possibility of comments very seriously, and check my blog at least a few times a day to make sure I can approve any that have appeared. And I try to respond in comments to any comment I have anything of value to say about. I am grateful for the time commenters take to write anything here and try to reward it with appreciation.

• Don’t underestimate the audience. A few people questioned, when I started doing these videos, if people would sit still for 15 or 20 minutes on these subjects. It’s odd, 15 or 20 minutes is, of course, shorter than any food TV show, but the perception was that online video needed to be 2 or 3 cute, snappy little minutes at most; the idea of spending 20 minutes going somewhat in depth into a topic (and a restaurant, and the life of the guy who owns it) seemed like something nobody would watch.

Yet here we are about five months later and as the viewership stats at Vimeo demonstrate, there’s a much stronger audience for 20 in-depth minutes on the people and philosophy and technique behind something than for 3 quick little minutes on the technique alone. There’s a much stronger audience for something that represents a single podcaster’s quirky personality and way of looking at the world than there is for something that plays like a skillfully-made but rather generic food demo that just happens to have local chefs.

And I think that points to another thing about our new media world. Generic doesn’t sell, individual does. The sites I go back to are the ones where I feel some bond, some kinship with the blogger/podcaster/whatever, because of his or her unique personality. It’s not about getting a million vaguely interested readers with the common denominator any more, it’s about getting a thousand fanatically loyal ones because they feel they need to hear from you on the topic of the moment.

Follow these principles and the lowly individual blogger, with no more resources than his own sensibility, will and spare time, can be shockingly competitive with huge media companies in terms of audience gathered, and by some measures occasionally kick their butts. Which is an exciting thing for him, but will be tragic if it means the big media outlets sink before these lessons sink in. I don’t want a world in which the media I grew up on and still read pretty faithfully bit the dust and were replaced by EatingOutWithBigEd.com. I want a world in which they successfully made the leap from the print era to the online era by absorbing the ways in which online behavior and expectations and tactics are different.

And if any of them would like my help in getting there, they know where to reach me….

Let’s return to something genuinely interesting: my comments about the demise of Eater Chicago, in the post “Death Eater” below.

Several reactions to the piece worth noting:

1) Helen Rosner of Menu Pages gently pointed out that the especially dull procedural item I cited as an example of Eater New York’s attempts to make newsy news out of trade news and minutiae… was in fact a quoted-in-its-entirety example of Grub Street (another NY food blog thing, which is corporately related to Menu Pages BTW) attempting to make newsy news out of trade news and minutiae.

So yeah, I kinda bungled that, but I think the point still holds, since Eater New York evidently found it thrilling enough to warrant reprinting.

2) Grub Street has its own comment on my post:

Sky Full of Bacon is ignoring the power of more “hype-ridden” blogs to drive readers to food-focused endeavors such as his own. Come on, man — all boats rise with the tide, or all bacon bits rise with the fondue or whatever. SFB points to the hype over Fergus Henderson’s appearance as an example of Eater’s superficiality — but if it gets someone to try crispy pig’s ear for the first time, or to pick up Henderson’s book in order to learn more about nose-to-tail eating than can be shared on a restaurant blog, well then what’s the harm?

Well, yes and no.  On the one hand this is the all-purpose defense of any form of media that willfully undershoots the intelligence level of its audience— to apply it to the world of film, it’s basically “Yeah, Entertainment Weekly may be bubbleheaded and running its 53rd cover story on The Dark Knight, but at least people will also hear about Kristof Kieslowski and they’ll check him out!”  You may be surprised to hear, from the snark with which that sentence was composed, that I don’t dismiss this out of hand.  Such media have greatly contributed to our hype-ridden world in which people care more about weekend grosses than the actual content of movies, seemingly creating an environment in which nothing could be more irrelevant than a European art film that makes bupkis.  But on the other hand, your local Blockbuster actually does have a couple of Kieslowski films which rent fairly steadily, which, I can assure you, is NOT what life was like when I was a 12-year-old film buff in Wichita reading about Antonioni and Godard films that seemed as impossibly remote to my life as a cocktail party thrown by Cole Porter at the top of the Ritz.

So media like this can make us a little dumber and a little smarter at the same time, depending on how we use them.  I accept that, though it also means they have to accept that I just don’t find all that industry news all that valuable to me, either, and a distraction from the things that are interesting to me.  This is really what it comes down, to the distinction between news and commentary.  Commentary interests me because there’s a person with a sensibility behind it.  News doesn’t interest me, because there just aren’t that many things happening in the restaurant biz that quite rise to the level of real news, in my book.

The other thing I am forced to accept, in honesty, is— I’m a total hypocrite and if Eater Chicago does ever launch here, please post about Sky Full of Bacon!

3) I got an email from the president of Eater inviting me to i) look more deeply at Eater NY and see some of the more feature-length, substantive stuff they’ve published, and ii) view the backstage double secret test site that Ari Bendersky has been posting to in anticipation of Eater Chicago’s launch.  I appreciate him taking the time to contact me and offer me that access, though I might still quibble about the whole idea of secret practice blogging— to me, one of the main virtues of blogging is the chance to discover what you’re about in public through feedback and just seeing how things play in the real world.  Will you do some stupid things and make mistakes along the way?  Welcome to the club.  I think corporate bloggers are foolish not to bite the bullet and accept that and be part of the world, secret practice blogging is sort of like secret practice at losing your virginity, there’s only one real thing and it requires more than one person.  Nevertheless, I appreciate his offer and will, when not eyeball deep in Obama’s transition the next Sky Full of Bacon, take him up on it.

Though they don’t seem to be making a big deal out of it as yet.

UPDATE: photo thread from the dinner is now up here.

Overall they shot down a few more than I would have predicted (the awards tend to be overly generous in my book)— Urban Belly and Great Lakes seem to have been rejected for being too new (Bill Kim’s anti-blogging comments probably didn’t help, but I doubt they really mattered), Peoria Packing for being too far outside the definition of the program, CND Gyros engendered an interesting debate over where the line is drawn between crappiness and great atmosphere, no one seems to have bought the Roman Hruska*-like argument that Lincoln Park deserved to make the list with the Athenian Room (or the fast-foody Little Brothers, which only I even tried), likewise Hannah’s Bretzel for the Loop, El Pollo Giro in Aurora or Naperville was just too obscure, Bonsoiree became the first two-time loser, without enough new trials to overcome last year’s mixed reviews, Kang Nam, once loved, failed to measure up, and Beef and Burger, though a convenient go-to place for me, didn’t strike anyone as that far above average.

I would have shot down Sahara Kabob (never been that impressed, south suburban middle-eastern would kick its ass, see my reviews of same), Double Li (a one-dish star and that one dish is overrated), Poochie’s (my meal was a definite miss) and I have pretty damn high standards for fine dining GNRs and the reviews on both Paramount Room and Prairie Grass Cafe were too mixed to justify a GNR at their price points, in my book.

And why in God’s name is Avec classified as Spanish?  Just because of small plates?  The food’s Italian and American contemporary if anything.

All that said, a good list, check ’em out.

* Nebraska senator who, upon hearing a Nixon nominee for the Supreme Court described as mediocre, asked “Don’t mediocre people deserve representation too?”

Eater Chicago is dead.

Yeah, what’s that? you ask. Eater is a group of online blogs about doings in the restaurant industry, with locally-focused editions in NY, SF and LA.  The name suggests a sort of gossipy thing like Defamer or Gawker, which are surely the models, although it all seems rather tamer and less trashy than such celebrity-oriented, what’s-Lindsay-snorting-now stuff.  Chicago was supposed to be the next stop, with one Ari Bendersky (ex of UR Chicago) as the blogger.  But the current environment of economic spookedness means that Eater has pulled out of the market.

To be honest, and with no disrespect meant to Mr. Bendersky, whose efforts we never got to see and can’t judge, I can’t say that I find this a huge loss, because I can’t say that I find the concept all that interesting.  It’s not like it’s been that tough to keep track of new openings (hey, I hear that Publican place is worth checking out).  If someone were to do real digging into the workings of the industry, that might be fascinating— I’m convinced there’s no end of rich material there— but such depth is unlikely to come out in a format aimed at producing ten newsy little blog items a day.  Look at this typical example, from Eater NY:

EaterWire: Ed Witt’s Chef’s Table, Jawn Chasteen in at Sea Grill, Plywood, and More

EAST VILLAGE— A little pre-plywood news over on Grub Street: Cru’s chef Shea Gallante is applying for a liquor license for the old Sea Salt space: “Orhan Yegen had trouble clinching a full liquor license before he ejected from the space earlier this year, and the CB has been no-nonsense about the Sin Sin zone (think Mercury Dime), but if anyone can charm them at the November 12 meeting, it’s a Michelin-starred chef…” [GS]

Pulse quickening yet?  There may be a certain audience for this kind of information about the latest hot places, but I find it hard to see why this kind of news of routine business transactions should be any more interesting to me than the “Heard Around the Injection-Molder” column in the latest issue of Plastics & Polymers Today.

Perhaps that’s an especially dull example.  But the attempts to gin up celebrity-sighting excitement by chronicling every movement Fergus Henderson made in New York are not really any better; it doesn’t tell you anything about Henderson (a genuinely interesting guy), it just flatters you that you’re in the know about… a guy in the foodservice industry who 99.99% of America has never heard of.

But Mike, you say, you spent years fostering an environment for exactly the dissemination of such minute foodie trivia at LTHForum.  And how can you say you aren’t interested in the doings of chefs and restaurateurs when you’re devoting so much time to a video podcast series about them? Are you saying you wouldn’t love to sit down with Fergus Henderson?

In the case of LTHForum, the news is much less what’s opening than what there is to eat there.  The focus is on the wonderful things people uncover at restaurants, which I can then go try for myself.  Yes, that’s sort of the same impulse that leads people to want to know about hot new places, but for me, at least, there’s much more interest and intellectual heft in going to a nowhere middle-eastern restaurant because some really cool authentic dish is on the menu than in going to Jerry Kleiner’s latest place just because it’s Jerry Kleiner’s latest place.

And in the case of Sky Full of Bacon, yes, I do it to get to talk to chefs and farmers and folks and observe them in action, but that’s because the action itself is interesting to look at, and I’m intrigued by the way that how they fix food and share it with others reveals their philosophy about food.  I’m interested in what they think about pork, not in their plans for expanding into Oakbrook.

What it comes down to for me is that Eater seemed to have carved out exactly the perspective on our food scene that is least interesting to me, most hype-ridden and PR firm-driven.  I can pick that info up peripherally while reading a blog like Menu Pages’, which is still focused more on what real people out there think and write about food than on what permits have been applied for.

Personal blogging is an escape from the strictures of publications that want the latest news and the five tips for this and that and a focus on the TV-famous. (Rocco DiSpirito on the 7 Ways To Drive Your Man Wild During a Post-Thanksgiving Tryptophan Drowse!) Corporate blogging, too often, isn’t an alternative to such trivial approaches but an even more extreme example of them, designed to grab attention quick so the eyeballs can be counted for advertisers. Anyway, I will miss Eater Chicago far less than I would any number of blogs written by real people who really care about food as food, not as a reason to feel trendier than the next person with the in-the-know stuff you know.

UPDATE 5: Some more thanks for the linkage to Chicago Examiner, who writes a whole piece about the underlying use-the-whole-pig issues which is well worth reading.

UPDATE 4: Well, I’m busy filming more pig action for the next video, so all I can do here is continue to thank folks for more nice words and links.  Today’s are a site called SlimPickinsPork, and this very kind comment at Chow.com from Chicago’s own Nicholas Day:

America, 2008: A land where people are filming, editing, and posting a professional-quality internet film about buying and cooking a pig’s head. A 19-minute film about buying and cooking a pig’s head. From the splendidly named Chicago food site Sky Full of Bacon, the video follows a pig’s head from the Oak Park farmers’ market to the farm-to-table restaurant Mado where it’s made into testa (recipe included). Highly recommended, but if you want to get straight to the headcheese, skip to the eight-minute mark.

UPDATE 3: The great Michael Ruhlman kindly linked to the headcheese video here.

Whether you got here from Menu Pages thanks to the Special Guest Headcheese Taster, or the Springfield Journal-Register thanks to my aversion to horseshoes, welcome. UPDATE: Thanks for links also to Mike Sula and Vital Info, and check it out at the Local Beet too. UPDATE 2: Thanks to Chuck at Chicagoist and Andrew at Gaper’s Block, and hey, this is kind of funny.

Check out the latest podcast directly below, or click here to read the original Springfield post.

One of the dangers of being a blogger somewhat dependent for publicity and awareness on bigger fish is that when you say anything about bigger media, you look like you’re sucking up.  Most notably, to yourself.

Nevertheless, at the risk of appearing to be taking the brimstone-scented gelt of Zell himself, I have to say, the Tribune food section has really kicked some butt lately.  Although the section is often identified with its star reviewer, Phil Vettel, I have to admit that’s not the part I pay attention to, so I have no position on whether he’s getting unusually soft on high-end restaurants, or just usually soft.  Hot new restaurant reviews are for people who need to show off where they’ve been to, not people who care about food.

What’s interesting is that the stuff beyond the starred reviews that is for people who care about food has really been good lately.  In fact I can’t help but think that there is a mandate to let the Tribune writers escape the shackles of the institutional voice and write with more of a personal, blog-like spin– but on the kinds of topics, and with the kinds of resources, that we associate with newspapers and good reporting.  When that approach works, it really is the best of both worlds, and the Trib food section has made it work several times lately:

• Christopher Borrelli wrote a great character sketch of a breakfast obsessive, sympathetic and yet also not afraid to portray the guy as kind of wacky.

• Monica Eng chronicled her visits to various places where animals are killed and her reactions to it– the kind of personal writing that wouldn’t have been in a newspaper pre-blog, but with a length and breadth that few bloggers could have devoted the resources necessary to achieve.

• The newly-redesigned Trib did a lavish how-did-Columbus-affect-food section for Columbus Day.  Not all of it was great, there are some term-paper-cribbed-out-of-the-Brittanica* pieces in it, but several are well worth checking out such as Emily Nunn on pecans and Bill Daley’s video tour of a post-Columbian produce section.

• Monica Eng again with a good version of an oldie but goodie, reporter follows health inspectors on their rounds.

So, count me today as someone who doesn’t think the American newspaper is dead yet.  Actually, I think the Trib’s food section has started making the right move from being for the person who’s just barely interested in food (and will look at the Jewel ads) to the person who’s quite interested in it and wants quality coverage.  So what’s the bad news for the Tribune, since there must be some?

The bad news is, I didn’t find any of these stories via the main chicagotribune.com.  I first heard about them somewhere else— Menu Pages’ blog or the Trib’s own The Stew or Ronnie Suburban’s media roundup on LTHForum or whatever.  In fact, even when I knew about them and wanted to find them via the Trib site, it was usually difficult (note that Menu Pages also gave up on trying to embed the Daley produce section video, which puts Sky Full of Bacon one technological step ahead of the mighty TribCo).  How people who know how to create a visually coherent special section in print can only produce a hopeless jumble online is beyond me, but the first thing standing in the way of the American newspaper online is the messy, visually unappealing, confusing as hell American newspaper website.

There, Sam, keep your damn gelt and use it to make your site work, like the New York Times’ but almost no other paper’s does.

*Deliberately archaic reference