Isn't Reporting A Customer Service?

I ask the question because I was astonished by how insufficent a New York Times article was today. (Full credit to my girlfriend for noticing the article and bringing it to my attention!) Given its premise -- finding a really good meal while traveling (link works even though Snap Preview doesn't show it) -- I wondered why the paper even bothered to print it. I travel pretty regularly, so I read the article to see if it had any new ideas for me to use. The sources? There are two: 1) The founder of Chowhound.com who, it might surprise you, uses Chowhound.com a lot when he travels. (He even mentions that the site works with the Palm Pilot and neither the reporter nor editor took the time to report that nothing requiring an Internet connection would work on the Palm Pilot, which hasn't been sold in more than five years and never had a live network connection.) 2) The founders of roadfood.com who, it might surprise you (as even the article mentions), use roadfood.com a lot while traveling. The last third of the article lists resources such as Zagat, Fodors, Google Local, and even the Yellow Pages that hotels provide in their rooms. The two main sources I use when I travel? Yelp and Opentable, which are not mentioned. The only question I had when I finished the article was: How long did the reporter take to report this story and were the editors more worried about filling space or providing a real service to readers? This is, after all, supposed to be the pre-eminent news organization in our country.

Comments

[Eric]

What about Citysearch, Menupages, Judy's Book, AOL Cityguide, Gayot, every local city blog and food blog types, etc? An article can't list every single website or every single resource for information in the universe. Yelp is a social web 2.0 site - their audience is not the average business traveler nor the average NYT reader. And OpenTable is a fine tool _after_ you've found where you want to go and are ready to make a reservation.

[Andrea]

Stewart,
I've used Chowhound a LOT when I travel on my Treo as well as the MDA. Unfortunately their current site is graphics-heavy, so I either wait a while for each page to load or sometimes I run it through Skweezer (a web-based intermediary to compress other sites).

Yelp! I am just getting into, and also JudysBook seems to be up and coming.

The best sources are sometimes finding whatever the town's "Weekly Alibi" is - their free weekly rag, and using them for ideas. Or hopefully, knowing a foodie in the town you're visiting....

But for comprehensiveness, Chowhound still seems to trump the other sites.

Good luck!

[John S.]

Stuart,
Thanks for the references to Yelp and Opentable. I've already found a restaurant in Arlington I'd like to try.
John

[David Tommela]

Stewart,

You have forgotten that the NY Times has its own definition of what's fit to print. If an article doesn't meet that high standard then they just change the content until it's fit to print. These are the folks that had a huge scandal with plagiarism and creative journalism resulting in many people including the editor losing their jobs. Now if you can write a classified dining review you can rest assured it would get complete coverage above the fold.

David Tommela

[Chris McBride]

Next time you're traveling to NYC or Chicago you might want to try out Savory New York - http://www.savoryny.com - or Savory Chicago - http://www.savorychicago.com. We also have an SF site - http://www.savorysf.com - that is growing. In addition to listings, each site features videos for top restaurants.

[Jim Dempsey]

I still have an old Palm IV with built-in wireless modem that I received as a promotion. It came with an offer for wireless access with a limit of 50 *KILOBYTES* per month. That didnt' sound like much data, even using a WAP client. I never signed up for the service, which may have never existed after all. Except for swapping a few contact cards with other PDAs, my Palm IV never communicated with the outside world. Sniff, sniff :-)

[Gourmet Pro]

If traveling to NYC, try RestaurantPics (www.restaurantpics.com). They feature some of the best restaurants in the city. The best of all is the array of photos of the restaurants and their signature dishes. Also, you can see menus, etc.