"Junior MasterChef is raising a crop of foodie kids" by Anooska Tucker-Evans

Full article: "Junior MasterChef is raising a crop of foodie kids" in Courier Mail

Source: Channel 10

This is a slightly coloured news story, reporting the potential effects Junior MasterChef has on the food trend of Australia.

The article is of typical length of a news story - 540 words – and with a short interesting intro about the potential changing taste of Australian kids. I think the intro captures the whole idea of the article, so I’d like to quote it here: “Forget fish fingers and spag bol for your children’s dinners, now it’s macadamia-crusted snapper and goats cheese ravioli on the menu.”

In terms of timeliness, significance and oddity, this news article nailed it. Junior MasterChef has just started, with an astonishing 2.2 million viewers for its first episode, and the buzz is likely to accelerate as the competition gets keener. The show obviously captures the attention of the whole nation and given our aggravating obesity problem and prevalent fast-food culture, the show brings about a lot of implications for people to consider.

For this article, Tucker-Evans did a pretty good job of balancing out opinions from different perspectives. The writer quoted four sources: fine-dinning restaurateur, Matt Moran, celebrity cook, Donna Hay, social commentator, Bernard Salt, and the show’s judge, Gary Mehigan. All of them provided different perspectives on what the show implies or triggers in the broader society.

To take the story to the next level, I suggest finding an angle that’s less obvious. The angle the writer used for this news story is fine. But to make it more interesting (probably for another story of the show later on), I will look into the lives of these Junior MCs and their families. The kids’ upbringings will provide more insights into how our nation should raise our next generation.

I am utterly blown away by how talented and passionate these kids are. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know the stories behind them?

"A saga of war and wine" by Leisa Tyler

Full article: "A saga of war and wine" in Sydney Morning Herald 

Further reading: "A wine worth fighting for" (2004) by Elizabeth Gilbert in GQ magazine

Source: www.marcopolis.net

Once I’d read the first paragraph of this article in SMH, I couldn’t help but compare it with a feature written by Elizabeth Gilbert in 2004. Both articles are on winemaking in war-torn Lebanon, but one appears in a newspaper and the other in a lifestyle magazine. Two disparate articles on the same topic? Very interesting.

In “A saga of war and wine”, Leisa Tyler wrote about a revival of winemaking industry in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. The vignerons even had plans to transform the place to a destination of wine tourism – hotels, wineries, vineyard restaurants and even the first winemaking museum in Arabic world.

She intertwined some notes on transportation and accommodations, history of the place, and an important sightseeing spot with the story. Excluding the fast facts of “getting and tasting there”, the almost mandatory element of a SMH’s travel article, the article is around 1200-word long – a typical length for a newspapers’ feature.

Given the limited space for the large amount of materials Tyler put it, I have to say she had fallen into the traps of “tell, rather than show” and “use more adjectives than active verbs”.

A 17-word sentence like this: “Led by Guiberteau, we make our way into the cellars where last year's vintage fills stainless-steel barrels” could have been tightened to a vigorous 13-word one like this: “Guiberteau led us into the cellars where…”. Of course it can still get better, but you see my point.

The story is informative but too journalistic for my liking. I much prefer the narrative style in “A wine worth fighting for” by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Source: www.marcopolis.net

This 2004 feature in GQ magazine is a 6000-word profile of a winemaker, Serge Hochar, who had been making wine in Lebanon during the war. Of course, Gilbert must have faced a more lenient deadline and more words to work with.

The time and length allowed her to inject anecdotes, set scene, show significant details of the people, craft better sentences, and include longer quotes. The story flows so nicely that it sounds like a conversation with a friend.

Most importantly, she brought out the passion and artistic persona of her subject - winemaking as an art and a creation of life.

Two articles are as disparate as Lafite and Burgundy. Which one do you feel like?

"New wave of foodies want their caviar, too" by Jane E. Fraser

Full article: New wave of foodies want their caviar, too in Sydney Morning Herald.

Source: Whybin TBWA

In this article, travel writer, Jane E. Fraser wrote that there is a growing trend among Australian foodies to look for gourmet experiences in unexpected destinations. Replacing traditional food travel destinations such as France and Italy are Thailand, Japan, Iceland, Spain, Greece and basically everywhere else.

She said there is a shift in what these foodies are looking for. Instead of merely looking for good food, thanks to the MasterChef effect, they now look more for the culinary experience - fishing in traditional Vietnamese way, wine-tasting in Thailand, or tyring out “the world’s only ecologically certified caviar” in Spain.

I think this is an exciting new angle to food travelling. The logic of such trend makes sense, but Fraser did not provide enough support and evidence to prove such a trend exists.

She quoted only two sources in this article: the owner of Food and Wine Travel, Karen Ridge and the managing director of Biznaga Travel Company, Casey Death. The majority of information was provided by Ridge while Death was only cited in two paragraphs about their company’s two-week travel package to Spain.

I seriously doubt the credibility of the sources. They are owner and manager of travel businesses, and it’s reasonable for me to assume certain level of bias in their stances.

The lack of figures and statistics to back up the trend is a serious flaw in this article. Is there any figure from the Australian government? Why not interview this new trend of travellers and hear what they say?

It seems that we can only take Fraser’s words for it. I didn’t know her so I checked her website, which said she’s one of Australia’s renowned and award-winning travel writers. However, readers always doubt what travel writers say in general, don’t we? We are sceptical because we think they are usually endorsed by the travel industry.

This article gives this feeling. The last paragraph about a STA’s travel deal smells “endorsement” – it is awkwardly placed; it isn’t directly related to the article; it sounds absolutely commercial.

Lastly, something minor. At the beginning of the article, Fraser used “that” cooking show to allude to MasterChef. But why not name it to avoid any ambiguity? Also, there is a grammatical mistake in the title – it should have been “new wave of foodies ‘wants’ their caviar, too”.