Fair enough. Don't mean to lump Siteline in with the others, but would love to hear the unfiltered take
While I may not have made much of Warner's design choices—what is there to say at this point, anyway?—I have covered his many properties and projects with an honesty not found elsewhere.That's likely why none of the properties has ever run an ad on Siteline. It's certainly their prerogative, and I'm willing to pay that price—but as a result, I don't think it's fair to Iump Siteline in with other media outlets.
Perhaps folks on the take, afraid of litigation, or afraid to lose advertising revenue. You will not find a single piece of critical commentary of Ty or his design choices, in any local publication, this website included. Which is a shame, bc it's not to late to (possibly) influence the design
Palapas do seem out of character for the property and climate. Love a swim up bar although they will need to keep the pool temp way up.
If a meal was comped (and very few that I cover are these days, I recently declined three invites to SB restaurants so I didn't have to feel like I "owed" them anything) and I didn't like it - I would thank them politely and tell them what i thought and either not write about or suggest i come back when things had improved. In any meal there are usually dishes that are better than others, and i often note that and i prefer to recommend anything that stood out. All of those comments about the Ellwood would have made it into a review - even if comped. Integrity and reputation are more important than appeasing a restaurant. I've been writing locally, regionally and nationally for over 40 years - and locals here know my tastes by now if they follow me.
Why would i say good things about a bad experience?
East Beach gates!
cabrillo pavilion gates by the sand
T(ACK)Y Warner ruins everything he gets his hands on. So appropriate to have Palapas, a lazy river and a swim up bar a la CABO at the historic Biltmore. Do better MBAR et al.
Hungry Onion is a pretty good replacement for Chowhound. Some of the same posters and good info.
Maybe an article where a free meal is provided, that speaks positively about the food, the restaurant owner, the staff, etc., should be labeled as "promoted content" (even if the price of the meal is much less than what a business would normally pay for that,).
Would any of your comment about the Ellwood (except for the last sentence) have made it into a review of a restaurant that comped your meal?
Leslie- I miss CHOWHOUND so much! Enjoyed all the boards.
Leslie, you are the best! Any and all websites about Santa Barbara should have you writing!!
Sorry to say, I agree. Carpinteria has so many new restaurants. It cannot sustain.
Love clever vanity plates. Saw one on a black car ORIPMAV - in the rearview mirror it was VAMPIRO
In exchange for property tax exemption, I am offering docent-led tours of my home for only $100 per person (reservations required). Artwork on display includes multiple pictures of my children and a SB Bowl poster of Florence and the Machine from 2018.
Have you ever seen the white Bentley convertible with Calif license plate; DELETE? Let me know how and I’ll email to you.
Besides the big problems that newspapers and magazines have, I think that online sites hastened their demise especially for things like restaurant reviews. When we traveled a lot I used fodor and Chowhound (now gone) message boards for advice for lodgings and food and sightseeing. Chowhound had Parisians or New Yorkers or Italians online recommending their favorite places or travelers whose taste you trusted. I do hope that the independent can continue forward and have a thriving online presence and I also really appreciate Siteline.
Also why can’t Corazon just open a place called Corazon with the exact same menu? They have my fave Mexican food in town.
Cool offbeat feature! Siteline always worth looking at. I particularly like the occasional “Walk with Me” posts
I'd like to ring in on this conversation as a longtime travel writer and restaurant reviewer, if you gentlemen don't mind. It's good to pull away the curtain on this practice.
I had a restaurant review budget when i did reviews for the Ventura County Reporter of $50. As you can imagine, that went a pretty long way in Mexican, Chinese, Thai and other inexp, restaurants (at least at the time!). Any place i wanted to review that went over that budget was on me. My pay was $100 as i recall.
I have traveled around the globe - both paying my own way and writing about it, with a budget provided by a magazine (in the good ol' days, like Westways for example which has a 2 million or more circulation and Conde Nast Traveler). But for other assignments - say Bride's magazine's travel section (which was also owned by Conde Nast) i was comped at a number of Carribbean hotels who wanted the coverage. We are talking 1980s here - i am old. There is also the other side: I have been running a series of stories in the Montecito Journal in my Travel Buzz column about Japan. My airline ticket alone was $3,000 and I spent thousands more on hotels, restaurants, museums, etc. I did accept a few hotel nights comped and have or will include HONEST reporting on those places, whether i liked them or not. However, the other side that no one has mentioned: what we are paid for these hard researched, written and fact checked articles (since many publications no longer have fact checkers). In the 1980s i was paid $1 a word for my stories and could make a living. Today a person is VERY lucky to get $1 or 50 cents a word; locally it is ten cents a word or even less. What was once a way to make a living - albeit meager - is no longer feasible and I was lucky to have supported myself for decades as a freelance writer. My travel column pays $75. That's the really little secret about journalism these days: writers are not well paid. I have also been cut back in one publication and earn about 25% of what i earned for years - not based on fee cuts, but assignment cuts and magazines try to survive. Perhaps England has the best system: if a writer was comped, that info is published at the end of the article; TV news here often notes if a press rate (reduced rate) was paid for a stay.
The same can be said for the vast majority of food/travel/concert/product/etc articles written by the vast majority of publications everywhere.
But we are happy to be the example, and to use this opportunity to educate those who may not understand how media works.
It is far from a perfect or ethically pristine system, but it is largely beneficial to all involved.
SB Amtrak Train Station
I was neither trying to troll the Independent nor reveal a secret: just pointing out that the praise in the articles—which is certainly review-adjacent—should be taken with a grain of salt if the meals were indeed comped. And there's no reason the Independent can't disclose who paid for the meal.
I’m not sure if this post was trying to reveal some dark hidden secret (or just trolling for trolling’s sake), but The Indy has always been forthcoming about how we cover restaurants.
We don’t do restaurant reviews, which require multiple anonymous visits to conduct properly. We write restaurant features primarily about the people, the place, the history, and the context, but, yes, of course we also cover the cuisine.
We’ve never had the immense expense budget it would take to cover meals for our writers, so we welcome comped meals, whether on group press evenings with many other journalists, or on individual visits.
Major national magazines and large metropolitan newspapers — both of which are struggling immensely to survive — have policies against taking free meals, and that’s an ethically pure and proudly righteous (if not always followed) protocol. We applaud their ability to do so.
But that is not practical or even possible for most other media, including both massive international publications and smaller regional papers like ours. We regularly eat for free when reporting a story, though we should always leave big tips!
The vast majority of publications in this country (and plenty, if not most, international publications ) accept comps in some fashion, whether for food, travel, product samples, concert tickets, experiences, etc. It is a secret to no one.
The choice is between taking comped meals and writing about restaurants regularly, or enacting a policy against taking comped meals, and rarely cover restaurants at all. That doesn’t help anyone.
We feel that it’s critical for us to spread the word about Santa Barbara’s restaurants and support a thriving business community, which is why this formula works well for us and for most publications around here.
Making strategic decisions like this is also why the Independent is celebrating our 40th birthday this year, and why we are remain one of the most successful weekly newspapers in the country, when so many others have shut their doors.
I hope that clears that up. Let’s eat!
Agreed (Seth). With nostalgia and melancholy.
