sucks for DC, now he wont get any good coverage from LA Times. Just kidding!
Love this
former deputy food editor andrea chang just got reassigned. no wonder she was crickets after meehan-gate.
It’s hard to respect anyone who didn’t speak up and try to protect their own team. Especially when the boss was directing them from New York. She was running day-to-day ops.
Edit: I’m actually surprised they didn’t can her for it.
Lacking in details but better than nothing.
I don’t know about the behavior problems, but the Times food section has gone way downhill since Jonathon Gold’s death, in my opinion. I realize that it is hard to do meaningful reviews during the covid-19 closures, but, surely, something more interesting than what now passes for the food section should be possible.
I don’t get why they aren’t doing reviews.
Most restaurants are open for take out and many are open for outdoor/distanced/safe sit-down dining. New places that are review-worthy (Mirame comes to mind) really need the exposure, now more than ever. If Addison and (new mom) Escarcega are not willing to go, they should get some folks to review who are willing to do it.
That explains a bit why Andrea has been eating in SF Bay Area in the past few months, The Shota/Yoshizumi/Hashiri etc and a few other places in the area (her parents are up here as well apparently). Might as well be an Instagram Influencer 
Not anymore…
All I know is that I attended every single one of the four S Nights held at Shunji’s ( #PerfectAttendance ). She wrote about S Night, yet I’ve never seen her there even once.
Nobody expects the Mulberry Man…
I wonder if the department shakeup has interfered with stuff in the pipeline. Addison and Escárcega have published way less than their usual amount of stuff this month.
;-D And they do have comfy chairs at Shunji.
Exhaustive (and exhausting) work from Eater’s Meghan McCarron:
Sounds bad!
One of the issues that employees struggling with Meehan’s behavior point to is that he seemed to create an environment of insiders and outsiders, and that the insiders included deputy food editor Andrea Chang and, to a lesser extent, Yoshino. Chang, senior writer Jenn Harris, and columnist Lucas Peterson (a former Eater contributor) would regularly dine out together, expensing their meals if they were relevant to a story, and posting glossy photos of these nights out to Instagram. Meehan would join during the one week each month that he was in town (there was even an Instagram hashtag: #peteweek). This “cool kids” dynamic (as more than one staffer put it) was in part driven by these posts. Instagram plays a more professional role in the food world than many other sectors of media, as an arena to display dining knowledge and build a profile, and while it’s one thing to know a boss and certain coworkers are friendly it’s another to see evidence of that relationship posted on social media for likes and clout, especially as other staffers were alienated by and fearful of Meehan.
That was a lot to take in for several reasons, but a really worthwhile read. Nice job, Eater.
Whew!
That’s quite a piece of serious journalism.
The guy’s got horrendous boundary and behavior issues and is a soul-crushing (non) leader.
For me there’s both a sad and a good side of the whole thing.
The good: in the old days tyrants and boundary crossers - who were successful - often could get away with it for years. Nowadays no so much (but still probably too much in some fields).
The sad: my own little stake (if you can even call it that), as a consumer (
) of food journalism, is that I really loved Lucky Peach and the direction they/he seemed to be going with LA Times Food section.
He appears to have had a talent for getting good people to do good things. And for fucking them up.
Oh so this is what that’s all about… Chang has been alluding to it but can’t talk about it due to a gag order he’s under
Yup Chang was his enabler at Lucky Peach. To his credit though he’s been very honest and straight forward about his mistakes