Free goods

Yesterday, I overheared this recounting at a bar: "As she left, she told us in a loud voice that she was a restaurant blogger."

I was reminded of a recent post by British beer author/blogger Pete Brown. He was writing about the boorish behaviour of a certain group of beer drinkers, when he wrote this:

But I have never - in my life - walked into any pub and either demanded or expected a free or discounted drink because of who I am, or what I do. If I did, I would expect and deserve to be called a complete and utter fucking twat by anyone who witnessed it.

In my 20+ year career in the beer (and restaurant) business, I have watched as customers and managers and salespersons and reviewers have harangued others for free goods. A free drink, a free meal, a free keychain, and often more substantial.

The business may have been more 'cut-throat' in the bad old days, but never would these good folk today think their actions boorish at best or tantamount to soliciting a bribe at worst. Oh, banish the thought! It's ethics, Mr. Beer Writer and Ms. Beer Customer. It's ethics, Mr. Beer Salesman and Ms. Restaurant Manager.

And plain old civil manners.

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• Caveat lector: I sell beer and wine in northern Virginia.
• Be sure to read the comments to this post.

Caveat Lector

In the interest of transparency, I should state that I sell beer and wine for Select Wines, Inc., a wholesaler in northern Virginia.

A partial listing of the beers Select Wines represents includes Flying Dog, Clipper City, Otter Creek, Stoudts, Allagash, Brooklyn, Lancaster, River Horse, Raven, and several imports.

The list of wines is quite extensive.

The contents of Yours For Good Fermentables.com are my personal views, and not necessarily those of Select Wines, Inc. or any other person or entity.

As per Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, he contents of this site may be reproduced, but only for non-commercial purposes.

• Website for Select Wines, Inc: www.selectwinesinc.com
• My Profile

To blog, or not to blog

A few months ago, a newspaper reporter interviewed me for a story about craft beer.

After we were finished, I offered to buy the reporter a beer. He thanked me but politely refused. I work for the Clipper City Brewing Company and, in that capacity, I was to be quoted in the piece. So, my gesture —a $5 pint— could have been perceived as a conflict of interest.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press (AP) delivered several cease-and-desist orders to a blog site at which bloggers had quoted AP stories.

The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.

Jim Kennedy, the AP's director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.

The meeting comes after AP sent a legal notice last week to Rogers Cadenhead, the author of a blog called the Drudge Retort, a news community site whose name is a parody of the prominent blog the Drudge Report. <...>

Short quotations of copyrighted material are allowed under the "fair use" provision of copyright law, but the law can be murky, Cadenhead said.

AP to meet with blogging group to form guidelines
Monday June 16,
By Seth Sutel, AP Business Writer

Without the AP —and other news organizations— much of the original reporting to which we bloggers react and reference would not be available. But the issues of copyright, blogging, freedom of speech, ethics, and the Digital Millennium Act all seem to intersect in the AP's legal action.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation lists the four things at which courts look to determine fair use:

• Purpose and character of the use.
• Nature of the copyrighted work
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used.
• Market harm (As the EFF points out, linking to the original story seems to negate most 'harm".)

Above, I've quoted approximately 150 words from the Associated Press story. I think those four paragraphs were essential to relating the 'gist' of the piece. And I've linked them back to the original article. Is that fair use?

To understand these and other matters of blogging, I'll be attending my first DC-area Washington Blogger Meetup later this evening. And here's an earlier post about another area of ethics in beer journalism.

The reporter and I?

We enjoyed a pint of saison apiece. And each paid for his own.

[UPDATE 2008.06.21: Resolution?]

Ethics in brewing

A couple of years ago, I was asked to participate in the Virginia Beer Cup as a judge: to anoint a craft beer as the best produced in the Commonwealth.

I politely demurred, stating that I felt such an activity to be a conflict of interest. Although Clipper City Brewing, for whom I work, is located in Maryland, its beers are sold throughout Virginia. Furthermore, I felt it presumptuous of me to stand in judgment of the work of my peers, from standpoints of both business and artistic.

I have never been invited to judge at the Great American Beer Festival or the World Beer Cup or other such professional competitions. But if I were, I would decline. It is not my place, ethically, to do so.

(Never say never: I did in fact judge at the 1997 US Real Ale Festival. In hindsight, maybe I should not have. I was the brewer for Cleveland's Local Brewing Company at the time, which had a entrant in the competition.

Northern Virginia brewpub Blue and Gold —now closed— won that year with its Union Jack bitter. The US Real Ale Festival, unfortunately, is likewise no more.

Beer writer Andy Crouch recently blogged about ethics in beer journalism: a different topic, of course, but one with similar implications concerning conflicts of interest.

It is my belief that this lack of ethical guidelines has caused beer writing to lack professionalism. This state of affairs contributes to a general absence of respect for the trade of beer writing. And where beer writing is not respected, the subject of coverage, namely the business of brewing, suffers. For a long time, it seems as if writers and brewers didn’t quite know what to make of one another. Sometimes hesitant to interact, brewers expected positive coverage from the writers. In return, writers quietly expected special treatment, be it the occasional free beer, meal, or access to events. The relationship eventually grew quite cozy, with the two groups serving each other’s interests quite well. The problem with this incestuous relationship is that the consumers never figured into the equation.

Positive coverage has so long been the expected standard in beer writing that what little inclination towards criticism or coverage aimed at bettering the consumer’s experience was quickly lost. For a long time, beer writers have believed that criticism means writing that Young’s Old Nick Barley Wine is actually more an old ale than a barley wine (and self-gratifyingly thinking that this is a radical and brave opinion).

More at Media Draft - Ethics and Beer Writing Continued…