Friday, June 5, 2009

Five Stars for the Crispy Pig Ear Salad: at short-staffed KC Star, readers' rep doing restaurant reviews

I just learned via Hearne that Derek Donovan, the Kansas City Star readers' rep (photo at left), is helping fill in some vacant staff positions at the paper by doing a little work on the Star's restaurant review beat.

On Wednesday Donovan reviewed dishes prepared from pig parts in a front page FYI section story titled “Snoots and Tails.”

Hearne Christopher has an alternate title: "Reader Rep Dines on Crispy Pig Ear Salad and Pickled Pork Skins."

You can see Donovan's review here.

Below is a photo of a delicious crispy pig ear salad. (Photo credit: Tammy Ljungblad)



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7 comments:

John Altevogt said...

This goes to the point I was making yesterday concerning the use of cut and paste materials from the Wichita Eagle. The Star has clearly been looted of far too many of its resources to do the job adequately anymore.

In addition, the cuts have been made have not been done on the basis of merit, but instead to protect upper management and duds like Donovan. So now what we have are irrelevant articles about traffic reports from Wichita, do it yourself restaurant reviews and nonsense from people like Donovan who can't do their own jobs properly much less anything else.

Add to that the fact that they've consolidated offices so that now the Wyandotte County reporters and the old Johnson County bureau are officed out of Olathe (look that up in your favorite map program). The Star's WYCO bureau was irrelevant when it was fully staffed and actually resided in WYCO, what they're doing now is anyone's guess.

Anonymous said...

There's no need for staff restaurant critics anymore. The public does a fine job online. Like the vanishing TV critic, the restaurant critic is a waste of budget.

Anonymous said...

What an insensitive insult to their Muslim readers.

Anonymous said...

Will this cause a spat between Derrick and Lewis Duiguid? Tainted fudge packing?

John Altevogt said...

9:51 I think Hearne Christopher's point was right on target. If you're going to do restaurant reviews, they should still be of professional quality. You're right though, this may be yet another area where they should just let the Internet take over. I've long argued that they should fire the editorial writers. They do nothing for the paper's reputation and usually tear it down and make it more difficult for the street reporters to do their jobs.

Anonymous said...

HOLY COW!!

Anonymous said...

Nope, unholy pig.