The answer: Because there’s no editing. Literally. Forbes now follows the model of many websites and runs unvetted copy by “contributors” and pays them, if at all, according to the number of hits their articles draw. (Which means the link here may have earned this guy a few shekels.) in Forbes’s case they now pay hit-generating contributors a stipend barely sufficient to keep them supplied with New Zealand sauvignon blanc.
Forbes has a vast network of 1,500 contributors; only some are paid. The site announced it will now pay contributors $250 a month and drop the ones who are least popular. How will that affect quality? As it turns out, not much.
A bit of background: Just about anyone could get to be a Forbes contributor. Forbes never edits those contributor posts. (My cousin, the economist Len Burman, is a contributor; he once posted an April Fool’s satirical post that was fine with them until it reached the top of Google News and fooled a lot of people.) When you read a post on a site that says “Forbes” at the top, you expect the level of integrity that a traditional magazine creates, but when you read a post that says “Contributor,” that’s not what you’re getting. You have to pay close attention to notice the difference between articles by actual Forbes reporters and from contributors.
Why does Forbes bother? Traffic. A lot of traffic. Forbes.com now has 54 million monthly visitors. I’m betting a majority of those are landing on the contributor articles.
I couldn’t figure out why there was so much utter garbage on the Seeking Alpha investment website until I learned that it operates on this model.
I will not deny that this ‘naughty’ article contains some platitudes, but Mariani’s article is anything but ‘the height of stupidity and ignorance’. His approach to question certain wine tasting rituals sounds very reasonable to me:
“Still worse is the wine lover—and I include some of my big name professional colleagues—who insists he or she can taste 50 wines or more in succession without food and make sensible judgments on them, an endurance gauntlet that ignores basic facts of human physiology, by which so-called “palate fatigue” is a real problem.”
I couldn’t agree more and I see no reason to call the man a ‘moron’!
And Greg, I drank a lot of Hungarian Tokays when I was young.
You (and the author) are right and undisputed when you say that it is much more enjoyable and better (to get a full picture on a wine) to taste just a few wines over hours/days. But you are both wrong in drawing the conclusion based on that undisputed fact that it must be hence impossible to taste 50 wines and get a good picture about the potential of these wines and differences.
And Greg, I drank a lot of Hungarian Tokays when I was young.
Rudi - that’s when you were an innocent lad, unburdened by the knowledge you would gain only with age and pain!!
John - did you ever read “The Man Who Had Everything”? The author talked about that business model. It didn’t take long at all for the kids to pretty much destroy the magazine. It would have declined anyway with the rise of electronic media, but they didn’t know what to do and they turned the magazine, which at one point was paying for real journalism, into another click-bait site.
I just see another old white man asserting his view is the right and only sensible view possible.
I don’t write professionally so I don’t know how much I can actually critique the writing. This piece just seems like another person shouting down from their mountaintop that they know the best path for you…
Adam Gopnik has written much better articles about this topic in the New Yorker’s annual food issue.There is a lot one can say about mistakes people make tasting wine, but what’s the alternative. AI for wine tastings??
If the writer gets palate fatigue after two or three rounds of wine and food pairings, I hope he doesn’t book a table at the French Laundry.
He will need a long vacation after that…presumably with no wine to taste.
No, didn’t know about the book. Under Malcolm, Forbes magazine was pleasantly unpredictable, cheeky and sometimes brilliant. Steve never seemed to have anything other than conventional conservative views (and his political aspirations) and the magazine declined under him, even before the internet upended the magazine business. (Fortune today is also a far cry from its heyday.)
The real bastardization of Forbes occurred after the Forbes family sold out to Chinese interests in 2014, however. Now it’s just a brand, trading on its distant glorious past.
The article is so stupid that I didn’t make it half way through. Yes, the author is stupid too for thinking he should be writing about food and wine. It isn’t even worth pointing out specifics; I’d be writing for too long and reading more than I care to. The only defense here involves multiple paths of completely false logic.
The real bastardization of Forbes occurred after the Forbes family sold out to Chinese interests in 2014, however. Now it’s just a brand, trading on its distant glorious past.
Hey - maybe they’ll sell to Michelin!
BTW - did you know Malcolm actually got a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in World War II?
Greg, I doubt that I was an innocent lad at that time, but it was indeed a few years before my palate shifted from sweet to dry white wines, champagne, and red Bordeaux. BTW, drinking sweet Hungarian Tokay was not as painful as one might think, but drinking red Bordeaux was often more pain than fun - at least at the beginning.
I frequently attended large wine tasting events then, which occasionally was fun depending on the attendants, but that’s it. The older I get, the more the idea sounds ridiculous to me that one can find any relevant things, if not the ‘truth’, about wines during such events. The fact, that many people, especially critics and people from the trade, have a totally different opinion, is in the nature of things. “Being determines consciousness”. I’m only an old Saarish Epicurean and my only goal is maximum pleasure and minimum pain - and believe me, I get maximum pleasure only from drinking fine wine, not from tasting.
As was previously noted, the quote he was looking for at the end is from Harry Waugh. Probably the most influential critic of his day. A genius. He attributed it to Broadbent who has probably repeated it many times but was not the source. As the story goes Mr Waugh was asked about whether he mixed up Bordeaux and Burgundy at a tasting. When asked he replied “not since lunch”. Shame he couldn’t have at least put that true little tidbit into this piece.
There are some half truths in this one but I think it is slanted towards a definite point of view. One that I don’t personally share but that is ok. Some people enjoy being miserable. I don’t.
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