By Darren Johnson
Campus News
It’s snowing out but it’s a good kind of snow. Easy to brush off of cars. The roads don’t look that bad. It doesn’t even feel cold. This kind of fluffy snow is clean and absorbs the chill, and the noise, too. It feels quieter outside. Most schools are open, but the college I teach journalism at is on delay.
Speaking of journalism, what’s considered the most coveted job in journalism is open — food critic for The New York Times.
This is to replace Pete Wells, who announced his retirement on “60 Minutes” earlier this year.
Why is this considered the best job in journalism? First, it probably pays a ton. Second, you get to eat in New York City’s best restaurants for free. You have the power to make or break a business, which adds meaning to the work. You’re in New York working for a top brand. A lot of people hang on your every word.
Wells said that the job wasn’t healthy. He wrote about his latest lab results:
“My scores were bad across the board; my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I’d expected even in my doomiest moments. The terms pre-diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around. I was technically obese.”
But he also said he’d lost the general zeal for food he used to have. It became a job. I guess everything that earns us a livable wage can become a job after a while, even the best job in journalism. That’s when it comes time to quit — or you’ll lose your soul.
Wells could probably start a Substack and make a fortune based on his following. That’s what older journalists with a following tend to do — some make six figures or more from this platform. While it looks like The New York Times will be fine with Wells’ departure, these defections to Substack, podcasts and other independent media surely spell the beginning of the end for the big journalism brands.
Maybe I should apply for the food critic job? I have the palate of a teenager, but I did watch “The Bear” on Hulu.
I do know how important it is to use a tweezer to put a tiny garnish on a tiny cylindrical blobby thing on a giant plate with some random drizzle.
That’s essentially fancy cooking, right?
But I have enough problems locally with the lack of decent pizza in my Upstate New York town. I know the local pizza places mean well, and they do support the community by sponsoring little league teams and such, but they mostly hire teenagers who really don’t care how good the pizza actually tastes. I ordered one last night from a local eatery, and it was a total mess. Asked for extra cheese but it was a brick of cheese, not fully cooked, that made picking up a slice impossible. It didn’t taste good, either. Normally I’d save the extra slices to eat for lunch the next day, but this one went straight into the trash. We tried to eat two of the eight slices in the pie.
What “The Bear” did was train their workers — they’d even send them to Europe to learn how to put the tiny garnish on the tiny blob. Apparently the extra training worked, because the restaurant got rave reviews by the Chicago food critics.
Maybe the local pizza places should send their cooks to other restaurants for training. They don’t have to go to Italy, but maybe New York City, or at least Troy or Schenectady. Instill some pride in making the product.
Otherwise, it’s just a job. And there should be more to life than just doing a job and going through the motions.
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