Changes in the LA Times Food Section

She still doesn’t get that she’s at most half as far down the career path as Addison is, and that there’s nothing racist about the Guild’s pay scale reflecting that.

“American Food Media Complex” is a proper noun? “American food culture, and its various economies, is rooted in slave labor”? Yikes.

I don’t think any of us have enough information to judge, but I agree with you that demanding equal salaries looks like a stretch. And union scales and procedures can be used to justify her treatment and lack of recourse. However, the fact that race is not explicitly written into guild rules does not mean that there is nothing racist about them.

One of the central tenets of systemic racism is that seemingly even-handed procedures can have the effect of perpetuating racist (or sexist, etc) inequalities, and locking them in place. Systems such as union scales and rules were designed by members of a historically preferred class, and will provide rewards and protections in a manner tailored to that class. Even if the designers were trying to be fair (and often they were not), they would define rankings based on desirable qualities found among their class, and will address grievances that they have encountered. They would either be ignorant of, or actively devalue, qualities and vulnerabilities possessed by people of other classes (who until very recently were at a massive disadvantage in accumulating mainstream credentials).

So when an outsider protests mistreatment, the “objective” rules are used to show how fair the system is to them, and how little merit they have. It is the very objective rigidity of the system, and the blind faith that people hold in its fairness, that locks in racial inequity and covers over racist treatment.

Why is it so important that a person had the title “food critic” vs “food writer”? That they worked for a prestigious paper or a lesser-known one? Obviously those can be indicators of sorts, but one would think that hiring and pay would not be hard-locked to surface indicators, but instead be based on the desirable traits that they supposedly indicate: domain knowledge, the ability to write for and attract a desired audience, etc.

Again, I have no clue how fairly or unfairly Patricia was treated. I would have to read a lot of her old writing. And, I dunno, interview her. Like for a job or something. But I wouldn’t put much credence in union pay rules as an arbiter of fairness.

Slavery is a strong word, but given the oft-ignored realities of people working at the foundation of our food production chain (a topic occupying more than half of this article), I don’t object to the use of shock language. And I don’t think some overenthusiastic capitalization is cause to dismiss an entire article and its writer.

Patricia’s own situation took up only one paragraph of the piece. Maybe some might think that’s one paragraph too many. But the short article drew together the different ways that minorities are systematically mistreated and devalued throughout the food production chain and in food media. I rarely see these things discussed in a common context.

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actually, salt. the same weight of fine salt will occupy much less space than larger crystalled sea salt. IIRC nosrat in salt fat acid heat also suggests that the brand of salt can make a difference as well.

It’s also a stone cold fact that our food systems are rooted in slavery which continues to have pervasive effects today so while that is indeed shocking and a “Yikes” statement it’s certainly true and worth saying.

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I know. Which is why I had pointed out that the LA Times now specifies the brand and type of salt. :slight_smile: Also, at least for baking, salt (regardless of type) occupies such a small percentage of the total wt of the final product that even, say, a 20% diff may not make THAT much of a difference (IMHO).

Ugh. And not “ugh,” as in, “I’m so tired of everyone trying to connect everything in the US to slavery,” but “ugh” as in, “I wish that it weren’t true that everything in the US is actually tied to the unresolved issues stemming from slavery.” ::sigh::

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This is quite timely:

Hope not, I’d rather ownership stayed local and he does a better job of righting the ship. They need stronger leadership at the top.

Sorry for the OT rant. The paper does mean something to me.

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And to me.

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Per Twitter comment, the article is inaccurate:

https://twitter.com/DrPatSoonShiong/status/1362862504796282881?s=20

However, he has not addressed the article also mentioning the possible sale of the San Diego Union-Tribune (several people have asked about that in the Twitter thread).

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Will be interesting to see how this plays out - no WSJ retraction yet.

Agree with you both. I feel like an investor like Dr Soon-Shiong is a best-case type of owner for the LA Times (like Bezos for the Wapo and Powell Jobs for the Atlantic).

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This is all discussed in detail above.

What matters is not the title but the work. Addison has been a full-time restaurant critic since 2002. Escárcega was the food critic for the Phoenix free weekly (New Times) from 2015 until she moved to the Phoenix daily paper (Arizona Republic) as a reporter. So in 2019, when the LA Times hired them, he had 17 years of experience, she had four.

She could have challenged her classification in the Guild’s salary scale, but was apparently unaware of it. See posts 75-79 and 86 above.

She and Addison have the same title and write the same kinds of pieces. Her complaints of racism all seem to be based on her salary scale classification.

Since I’m calling out Sims for incompetence, here’s a brief outline of one way to make things clear.

A reader recently asked me, after reviewing the first recipe we published with our new metric weight measurements, why our weight for “1 cup all-purpose flour” — stated as 142 grams — was different from another publication that listed a cup as being 120 grams. Is there not a standard? And if so, who’s right and who’s wrong?

Here’s a one-cup measure, tare’d on a scale:

Here’s the measure filled with flour and leveled off:

Here’s the measure filled with the same flour and leveled off:

Why does the second cup weigh 25% more? Because it contains less air. For the first cup, I spooned in the flour, for the second, I used the measuring cup to scoop it out.

To quote Stephen Stills, nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong. Trying to standardize on the weight of a cup of flour is futile. Do like professional bakers, Europeans, and the authors of these recipes: buy a scale.

So why do we and other publications include these unreliable cup measurements in recipes? Because too many American readers get upset when we give only weights.

nosrat suggests that a tablespoon of fine salt could be 2-3 x’s “saltier” than the same volume of a larger crystallized salt. but it also depends on when the salt is used; especially when baking where finishing salt often adds texture as well as flavor.

The potential difference when measuring flour by volume is up to around 25%. That’s enough to change the hydration from 65% to 52% or 81%.

A tablespoon of regular table salt (the densest kind) is 19 grams, a tablespoon of Diamond Crystal kosher (the least dense) is 10 grams, so the potential difference is up to 90%.

Already happened after I bought into an HOA…

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Ugh, been there done that too.

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Well, there’s this recipe roundup from the LAT Test Kitchen coordinator; gotta say we have rather different definitions of “meatless” - six recipes with fish?

I know this is using “meatless” in the Catholic/Lenten context, but … .

(Guessing this would have been caught and headline changed with more attention to editorial aspects of the section - can’t imagine the level of stress they are all under.)

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Meatless definitely does not mean vegetarian for us Catholics! :slight_smile:

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That listicle is specifically for Lenten Fridays, so I read “meatless” in the Roman Catholic sense, i.e. abstain from “beasts of the fields and fowl of the air.”

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I’m Alice Short, The Times’ interim food editor, subbing for our restaurant critics, who are on special assignment …

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