Who Owes Who What?
Lots of beerbloggy activity this past weekend. Lew started things off by discussing an exchange from the Brewers Association forum, which resonated in his own comments, and also over to Appellation Beer, A Good Beer Blog, and Beeradvocate, of course (BA Magazine being the inspiration for the kickoff forum exchange).
Lots to digest, but the main gist is this: should the beer press be positive, or honest?
I think even though there is disagreement in details, most people come down solidly on honest. The GoodBeer scene is large, and contains a multitude of different opinions, vantage points, and degrees of knowledge, but I’m firmly in the camp that it doesn’t need to be coddled. There was a kerfluffle a few years ago about this very issue — being TOO positive in beer journalism — and one or two folks promised to change their ways. But it seems that being nice is still a primary directive in the minds of some, while I as a passionate fan of GoodBeer and a consumer (and a former industry member [retail]), really far prefer honesty. I do think that honesty can be expressed without, shall we say, “assitude,” but that’s at the discretion of the person/editor. A certain degree of cruelty can be useful in the long run.
Or it becomes a starting point to talk about issues outside of brewery control, such as distribution handling and retail (both on- and off-premise) handling. Those three factors are killers in the beer business, since most breweries exert very little influence once the beer leaves the loading dock. Brewers and brewery employees tasked with customer relations need to be ready to take on literally anything in the comment world of the internet … these tangled tubes can spew out voluminous quantities of anything you might ever want to see in terms of opinion. It’s interesting that a print magazine still holds some sort of primacy — even one only two issues old! — in this debate, despite the fact that online news and info sources on beer are clearly taking a lead in at least discussing and being on top of the cutting edge. Perhaps that in itself is a sign of industry puberty: that the older forms of communication are still granted a primacy over and above the more current forms. It seems a form of seeking attention from the “adults,” conceived in this crappy analogy as the mainstream print publications (NYTimes, etc.). And yes, print does seem to reach OUTSIDE of the community, such as it is, moreso than the online fora, but that will change sooner rather than later.
So who owes who what? Brewers owe me good beer. Distributors and retailers owe me good beer. All three groups have responsibilities to get me, the consumer, good beer. I owe them my business … IF THE BEER IS GOOD. There’s a strand of “call the brewer” as a reply to any issue that arises when trying an off beer. But I also say, call out the retailer and the distributor, too. The entire system is accountable to me, since I’m the one with cash, which is what, in the end, all three are trying to get.
Brewers are owed a certain modicum of respect, but that street goes both ways, more and more as the power of electronic communication grows. “Nice” fails to move things along, it merely floats there. They ought to be ready to take complaints and respond with a mind to customer service. I know the industry doesn’t really have room for that on many levels, but it’s time to change that — there’s no more excuses for cranky dismissals of the customer base, even if that customer base is rude or uninformed. I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of abuse myself, and it’s no fun … but the proper RESPONSE is more powerful than none at all.
And I say BAH to treating a bad review in print as bad for business — it’s time to equalize the power fo print and electronic in the GoodBeer world. Print is owed nothing: like any format of information, it’s up to the reader/user to decide its utility and power.
