Since the majority of food-related content for the Dallas Morning News and Eats blog comes from freelancers, rather than staff writers in the employ of the Dallas Morning News, what can you tell us about the practices of your freelancers?

Who cares about 2 bloggers in LA?

Well, Grady, I think those two are hoping to get bloggers all around the country to join them.

Qwairie: There is only one freelance contributor to the EATS blog at the moment, Kim Pierce. As a former Dallas Morning News staffer, Kim is well-aware of journalistic ethics, and she adheres to the same standards that we staff writers and editors do.

After reading the code of ethics and considering your reviews so far Leslie, it seems you are doing it "by the book". Good job!

Interesting... I think there should be some kind of guidelines for food bloggers and commenters. One of the problems with my blog is that if I waited until I visited a place two or three times, I wouldn't have a whole lot of places to write about. I do disclose that these are just my initial impressions and that I welcome any difference of opinion that anyone might want to offer.

What I consider to be the worst issues are the commenters that basically attack the writer. Saying things like, "you don't deserve to be a critic" or "you are the stupid if you think..." is just ugly and I wish people would control that kind of comment. It degrades the local blogging community. I think the interaction is a great thing. It's just the rudeness that I don't like. I mean, would you say that to someone's face? And if you would, do you have any friends? Who treats people that way in real life?

A bloggers "code of ethics" just, won't work. There will always be those that refuse to "play by the rules".

@ Leslie: Christopher Wynn and Kim Pierce appear to go to many media events where they get free food and chat with chefs and owners. (In some blog posts, you've made it a point to mention that you *didn't* attend an event of this nature.) How is that reconciled with the AFJ requirements about anonymity and payment in full for all meals and services?

Kim Pierce writes reviews for the print product. Though Christopher Wynn doesn't, he does post mini-reviews of the restaurants on the Eats blog. Does one (or do both) fall outside your definition of a "food critic," making them exempt from the AFJ rules? If not, do you believe it would be unproblematic if you attended and wrote about these events yourself?

Because food bloggers are often funding themselves, we recommend the guidelines, but know that a lot of people can't afford to go to restaurants more than once before they say anything. We suggest they do, but that if they don't that they disclose this fact to their readers, so there's no confusion. We also encourage full disclosure for samples, junket meals etc, so that the readers know if the writers they are reading haven't paid for things. We recognize that not all bloggers have journalistic backgrounds, no do they strive to compete with professional writers, but since their writing has potential impact nonetheless, we decided to lay down a framework to start from. In some minds it's too rigorous, in others it's not enough. We're just glad to have gotten the discussion started.

Of course there will always be those who don't play by the rules. But blogging is not a profession as classically defined (eg doctors, lawyers). This is because it is not a self governing body who has the ability to control entry and discipline members. That does not mean that there is not some intrinsic value to a Code to at least stimulate conversation. At best it can act as a brand that helps readers quickly identify the standards that are being followed in a field that is almost dizzyingly diverse.

That said, we need to acknowledge that blogging is distinct from journalism, and right it should be or it would be redundant. It is conducted by a different set of producers (mainly hobbyiests and a few trying to be self supporting but independent of big institutional support), and an audience looking for different things.

Bloggers that take comps are whores, even if they did learn to do it by watching professional freelancers.

A "food blog code of ethics" is a naive idea based an old-media construct. It is an attempt at pseudo-accreditation, and it includes potentially exclusionary rules set by a self-appointed governing body. Those characteristics are a sign of a mature and shrinking industry ... old media. These bloggers -- and, as of this evening, they number three, as far as I can tell -- are trying to apply a mature industry's approach to a new, vibrant and growing medium. The concept is doomed to failure, and deservedly so. It is like a small group of people who use YouTube trying to impose Motion Picture Asociation of America content standards on everyone who uses YouTube.

Blogging is viable and interesting and, if you haven't noticed, eating the lunch of mainstream media BECAUSE it has no rules set by anyone other than individual bloggers, and because bloggers are not hidebound by orthodoxy. This discussion is not taking place in the "print version" of the EATS Blog. It's not happening on radio or television or even on first-generation internet media like Slate. It is taking place on a blog, with readers agreeing with and challenging "accepted wisdom." There are no editors of the content, and only a few "police" (the people whose blog it is.)

From a purely practical standpoint, I would ask: what, exactly, would a code of conduct accomplish? How would it make anyone more "accountable?" How would it keep all bloggers from accepting free meals? How would it cause anyone to act more "civilly," and by whose definition would that "civility" be judged?

In my opinion, this concept is sound and fury signifying nothing in today's world. Whom are the codifiers trying to "protect," and why do they need "protecting"?

Blogging exists for many reasons. Because you can. Because you want to. Because a newspaper or magazine DOES do something. Because a newspaper or magazine DOES NOT do something.

To suggest that a food blogger "code of ethics," developed by people who either are insiders to the industry or want to become food writers, is a valid pursuit, is naive at best. You want a code of ethics? Fine, stop blogging and get a journo job. Or get busy and propose a code of ethics for wine bloggers, car bloggers, cat bloggers, plumbinbg bloggers and yada yada bloggers.

As is mentioned above -- exactly how does such a code make one more "accountable." It does not, and it plays out in spades elsewhere. Heck, there's a food blog right now in this town that is so totally unaccountable it's laughable at times. But, people still go there to see the train wreck written by the people that run it (and no, it's not Eats). It's human nature - -oh... lookee the crash there today, Martha. And they are supposedly AFJ people!

The whole idea of making the assumption that an independent food blog (i.e. not print-related) is there to critique, so therefore needs to be policed for the good of all, is a fallacy. In actuality, any such thing I have ever read is there to state an *opinion* and leave it at that. Why would anyone want their opinion policed?

It's a prophylactic proposal... 6 years after the birth.

One of the reason to have a code of ethics in any profession or pseudo-profession is where there is some kind of power imbalance that can be abused. In the case of doctors and lawyers they have a huge imbalance over the rest of us in the form of the very esoteric knowledge they have, and so an ethical system is put in place to ensure that they imbalance is used for the patient/client's good. In the case of food reviews, whether done on a blog or in a newspaper, the power imbalance comes from the power that the critic has to impact someone's livelihood. A bad review by a DMN critic can wreck a business and since there are often a lot of peoples' money, mortgages, and savings at stake in a restaurant it is important that the review be honest, but also fair. Bloggers with a big enough readership can have the same impact, whether they want to admit it or not (and, frankly, why would they want to write unless they actually hoped to get a large readership and influence the opinions of others).

Now one argument offered above is that there are some AFJ outlets that are 'unaccountable' and that therefore invalidates the AFJ ethics. But it seems to me that only if you have a set of guidelines can you judge if someone is violating them. Without AFJ you wouldn't be able to judge whether or not that outlet was being fair or not. The abuse of guidelines does not invalidate them, but instead points to their relevance as a means of pointing us to more just ways of dealing with others.

The other argument is that somehow a set of guidelines is an old-fashioned 'naive' idea that will go the way of the buggy whip just as soon as our newspapers give up their dying breath. But it seems to me that if that happens that bloggers will actually have more of a responsibility to be fair and ethical, as the power will be more concentrated. If thinking ethically ever goes out of style, whether in print or online, then we are going to be in trouble. And I can hardly see why having some ethical guidelines (which are voluntary, of course) can harm a blogger. After reading the AFJ guidelines they seem like a reasonable attempt, based on a lot of experience, to indicate how one can review a restaurant as fairly as possible -- what can be wrong about benefiting from the long experience of others? And it's not like the AFJ guidelines are somehow responsible for the failed business model of newspapers.

So I applaud the bloggers for proposing something for discussion and for realizing that their words can have an impact that require some responsible thinking.

1) Nobody (inc. me, since I used that word) said that being "unaccountable" invalidates AFJ rules. I said that AFJ rules obviously have no self-policing effect on some 9Obvious) AFJ bloggers. Huge difference, and it involves siitustional ethics, not "invalidation" as you use it.

2) Nobody said thta guidlelines were going the way of the buggy whip as soon a newpapers die. It was said that the old school is trying to enlist old forces on new tricks. Again, completely different. For example, look at the link off the LA blog to to the code -- it's even typeset and WRITTEN in a newspaper columnar, officious AP style - puuuuuhleeeeeze!

3) Nobody said that voluntary guidelines can harm a blogger. Tt was said, more than twice, that the opinions of people who write voluntarily in their OWN blog need not, and can not, be policed.

4) I hate to break it to you, but many, many, many people write writing's sake and because they like to write -- not because they WANT an audience. Just like people play music, or write poetry or work in the garden, or blog-write. Nice try - Seacrest out.

Quairie-
The DMN staffers and freelancers use their real names. Think you might want to adopt that practice too, seeing as you are discussing accountability?

pointless self aggrandizing imo. If you're going to do something, do it. There's no need for some meaningless "code of ethics". Plenty of bloggers already employ a much different yet in some ways stricter code. Others clearly offer little in the way of assurance with respect to veracity or expertise. If a blog does have a huge following then yes maybe they owe it to their readers to at least explain any conflicts etc, but their readers have to be the ones to hold them accountable. For the rest, caveat emptor.

Although made up for as an afterthought in this case, comping was allowed:

"When it came time to pay the check, the server told us dinner was on the house because of the smoke. Wow. Did they do that for every table, I asked. "Well, a few," said the server. "I think they comped table 61."

This made me nervous. And suspicious. Why would they comp us, and not everyone who was bothered, which would have been everyone? Was I recognized? The service was excellent, but I had watched as our server took extra care of all the tables around us. I calculated what would have been 20 percent of our bill, and left that. A few days later, I called the restaurant's publicist and paid for our dinner using a credit card on the phone."

And quite frankly, I see NOTHING wrong with accepting the meal on the house. If your "ethics" aren't strong enough to write an honest opinion about a place regardless of the price of a meal, no code of ethics is going to do you any good.

Just curious - why was this brought up? Was it because of some of the nasty attacks in a recent review/blog?

Man, there's nothing new under the sun, and blogs are essentially the electronic equivalent of unrestricted op-ed articles, not some amazing new paradigm of communication. I think what we're seeing right now is the "Wild West" phase, similar to the 1996-2001 era in online commerce, and eventually, a lot of methods of blogging and more or less instant journalism will be pruned, leaving only the proven survivors.

I believe this pruning process will pretty much regulate a lot of this- for example, in time, food blogs will end up being written by knowledgeable and ethical writers who have a passion for food, if only because they're the ones who will have content worth reading, much like the way that the online businesses that stayed around were either ones that were already established outside the web, or who really did add value to something by virtue of being online (Amazon.com, for example).

"...blogs are essentially the electronic equivalent of unrestricted op-ed articles, not some amazing new paradigm of communication."

How many "unrestricted op-ed articles" existed before the Internet? And if Amazon.com wasn't a new paradigm in retailing, what was it?

Following your stated logic, automobiles were just the motorized version of the horse and buggy, not some "amazing new paradigm" of transportation.