into the fire

Last year I got a bit of a bee in my bonnet (or perhaps my apron) about a talkfest put on during the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival looking at the future of food and the media. I was stunned to see that food bloggers failed to rate a mention, let alone a seat on the panel.

I built up a good head of steam on the subject:

I find this curious. After all we are the punters. We are not the insiders from the mainstream media. We are the ones who pay for our meals, have no editorial restrictions and are read in the thousands each day. Bloggers are at the coalface. We actually try out the recipes from the latest hyped cookbooks (well some of you do), rather than have them displayed prominently and hope osmosis will do the trick. But we remain invisible, according to the festival guide and in a whole day of workshops discussing this theme, are nowhere to be seen.

Well guess what? They listened. Matt Preston commented on the post with promises things would be different this year. And they are. We have our own Ed from Tomato and Stephanie Wood from Elegant Sufficiency (yes she is in the Fairfax stable but she blogs beautifully) on the panel of one of this year’s Out of the Frying Pan sessions.

Though despite his response, inviting us to get more involved, “We are also keen to keep all those bloggers who are interested updated with Festival announcements. This was the first year that we started to compile a dedicated media list of online media and we'd love that to grow. If any one wants to email us so we can add them to out media database that would be great. Send your details …” I am sad to say this hasn’t happened.

But Matt’s made amends. If you’re interested in going to the all day event on Monday March 3rd and would like to score yourself a free ticket pop over to tomato for a very special ticket give away offer for food bloggers. It would be nice having an informal blogmeet sponsored by the festival, as well as the opportunity to add our 2 cents worth from the audience.



Update: It looks like I am one of the lucky recipients of a free ticket. Thanks Ed. As of 26.2.08 only 8 of the 20 tickets on offer have been taken. There might be room for a last minute pitch for bloggers who want to attend.



The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is on from 22 February - 8 March. Tickets for Out of the Frying Pan can be purchased online.