Back in June, the New York Observer published a piece by Manhattan restaurateur, blogger and soon-to-be-book-author Eddie Huang about Red Rooster chef Marcus Samuelsson, tied to the release of Samuelsson's memoir, Yes, Chef. In it, Huang took a look at the cultural and culinary implications of Red Rooster, one of Harlem's most critically hyped (and priciest) dining destinations.

Samuelsson did not take kindly to the piece then. And over a month and a half later, he's still talking about it.

In an interview with the Washington Post's Tim Carman, Samuelsson responded with vigor to a question about Huang's piece. Emphasis ours:

TC: This seems like an appropriate time to mention Eddie Huang’s essay for the New York Observer, which essentially argued that your perceptions of Harlem were patronizing.

MS: That’s also giving it a lot of thought. The other quick answer is that maybe he wanted to punch up.

TC: Punch up?

MS: Are you kidding me? It’s a joke. You’re dealing with a guy who doesn’t want to enter a conversation. Even discussing it is a waste of time. I trust the New York Times. I trust The Washington Post. I trust the New York Herald. [1] I trust the Tribune. I trust the journalists that I’ve read and that have carefully thought about what to [say], and then render their judgment. I also trust my own work. I have zero interest to get into people who want to get famous. There’s two ways to get famous. There used to be one way: You worked really hard, and you were really good. That was the only way to get known. I still believe in that one. [2] So if I poured a beer on you and we put that on YouTube, maybe we’ll get 4 million hits. I have zero interest in that.

I can tell you my reality: I moved myself from Midtown 10 years ago. I looked at Harlem, at 22 percent unemployment [3]. I look at that block where [Red] Rooster is today, where there’s zero unemployment. I look at the 110 employees that I have, where 80 of them come from Harlem. I’m not here to defend garbage; I trust my work. It takes an incredible amount of effort, an incredible amount of skill to do that. To even answer garbage, why should I lower myself to that level? I, as a mentor, as a mentee, as an employee, as a chef, I have a responsibility, and it’s not to go bottom fishing and enter garbage. [4] It is to rise above and be the person that I set out to [be]. So I hold myself to that standard. Garbage will come.

Criticism is part of the creative man’s journey, and I appreciate it. [5] Garbage is not part [of it]. I see the game. The game is about punching up today. The game is about ‘Here’s somebody that does something great. Well, rather than applaud it, I can now punch up and be part of that conversation.’ [6] What’s fascinating today is that ... before, there was not an outlet for that garbage, and today, real platforms are actually writing about that. [7] That’s what’s fascinating to me; the real platforms are lowering their guard.

A few notes:

[1] The New York Herald hasn't been a newspaper since 1966.

[2] Eddie Huang's writing has certainly made him some type of name, but his cooking isn't bad either. It's been praised by the New York Times (twice), New York magazine, the Village Voice and plenty of others.

[3] In 2002, Harlem was actually at 11.4% unemployment, as opposed to the 22% unemployment rate Samuelsson cites. As far as "the block where Red Rooster is today" having "zero unemployment," we can't speak to the particulars of that block, but the 10027 zip code where Red Rooster is located has a current unemployment rate of 10.27%, which is more than twice the average New York rate of unemployment (4.32%).

[4] Maybe this is a matter of semantics, but if Samuelsson didn't want to "go bottom fishing," he wouldn't continue to discuss Huang's piece—as he does here, as he's done previously—more than Huang ever did.

[5] Eddie Huang's response to a bad review of his Lower East Side restaurant, Xiao Ye, was to admit that he had done something incorrectly. In response to open criticism of his piece about Samuelsson, Huang was receptive and open to conversation. Marcus Samuelsson's previous response to bad reviews and failure was to abandon ship.

[6] Samuelsson keeps referring to Huang's "punching up." Huang's memoir is going to be published by Random House in February 2013. Samuelsson's memoir was published by—of course—Random House as well. If anything, it'd seem at least in one regard (though maybe more) Huang is punching laterally. Also, Huang and Samuelsson both worked on The Great GoogaMooga together (as you can see above).

[7] Other "real platforms" that are "lowering their guard" by covering Huang that we haven't already mentioned: Time, Esquire, Salon and The Wall Street Journal, to name a few.

Huang has taken to Twitter to comment on the interview, not on Samuelsson's response, but on Washington Post interviewer Tim Carman's questions (and how Carman, in Huang's eyes, let Samuelsson off the hook by dismissing criticism as punching up). Huang has a point: Carman could have known with very little research that, if anything, Huang was (as we have just pointed out) punching laterally. Then again, it seems as if Carman may have had his mind made up about Samuelsson going into the piece.

Some choice descriptors of Marcus Samuelsson (from Carman, the interviewer):

• "You seem meticulous by nature ..."
• "You’ve been very successful ..."
• "In some ways, your journey has been a more difficult experience ..."

Of course, Eddie Huang wrote the piece for the Observer, and while not everyone at this paper will agree with what Huang had to say, most of us would argue his right to say it (on the sure footing of the aforementioned facts alone).

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

(Photo: PaidContent.org)

The journalism community prides itself on its social media use, but a study released yesterday reveals that mainstream news organizations are using Twitter wrong, i.e. to advance their own material as opposed to engaging with readers and followers.

Researchers from The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and The George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs examined over 3,600 tweets over the course of a week last February (Feb. 14-20, 2011) and found that those news organizations used the social media site to promote their own editorial content. The study concluded that "sharing of outside content and engagement with followers are rare."

The study found that most of the 13 main Twitter accounts had a similar focus, promoting the organizations own work with links hopefully sending followers back to their websites. On the main accounts, 93 percent linked to a news story on the organization's website.While it makes economic sense that news organizations will promote their websites on Twitter, it's possible to do both: New York Daily News regularly asks followers to send pictures and comments over Twitter.

Some other highlights of the study:

• A lot of the news organizations had multiple accounts. With 98 to choose from, The Washington Post was on top. The Observer likes the idea of multiple accounts for niche blogs (check out @Betabeat), but Civil War WaPo (@CivilWarwp) is a bit excessive.
• Civil War accounts aside, The Washington Post's main organization account tweeted the most (664 different tweets during the week), followed by The Huffington Post (415 tweets) and The New York Times (391). Cable news networks tweeted the least.
• Only 2 percent of tweets from main feeds were "information-gathering in nature."
• Fox News retweeted the most of the 13 organizations studied, while The New York Times didn't use the retweet function at all. In fact, 44 percent of Fox News' tweets were retweets during the sample week in February.
• Researchers also examined the feeds of 13 individual journalists (the most followed at each news organization) and found that only 3 percent asked for information and only 6 percent of their tweets were retweets of outside institutions. (Guilty.)
• The study found that health reporters make use of Twitter as a reporting tool more than any other beat, with 6 percent of health reporters' tweets soliciting information. Hey, it's better than nothing.

In an article from November 1981: "A relative gastronomic backwater only 10 years ago..."

In an article from January 1990: "For years, well-traveled food mavens from New York and other gastronomic centers considered Washington about as provocative as a tax audit..."

In an article from March 2003: "The less than good news is that as in the rest of Washington, the number of mediocre restaurants remains high and the number of steakhouses -- four, and not one worth visiting..."

The catalyst that prompted this plea to end the bullying was a piece in The Times by Jennifer Steinhauer exploring the recent explosion of nostalgia-inspired menus about town, heavy on comfort food and lacking in the elevated taste New Yorkers take for granted.

"When they open restaurants, what they want, it seems, is not a crack at a Michelin star, but rather mid-level places where they could get food from their childhood, and attract residents who craved the same," the Times story explained. 

Then the beef gets serious. The Post lists a few restaurants that could stand up to a place in Manhattan, and even makes a tenuous metaphor likening the D.C.-loves-junk-food argument to political disaffection. So cute, Post! D.C. people are always doing that out-of-nowhere political allegory thing.

Anyway, instead of building a grandiose defense of Washington's restaurants, or at least its food culture, it falls back on that longstanding inferiority complex.

"We understand by now," the article reads. "You're better than we are. Your fashion is better than ours, your art is better and, of course, your restaurants are better. Washingtonians will forever cower in the long shadow cast by Gotham, nervously picking our nails and hoping you will like us one day."

Correct on all counts! Now can we go back to ignoring you, Washington Post? We're busy reading The Times over New York's unparalleled bagels, coffee, pizza, pastrami, matzoh ball soup, pretzels, falafel, dumplings, and all the restaurant food places in D.C. can't compete with.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

"I'm content for the old journalists not to pay for information. It keeps the price down," Denton electronically messaged the Washington Post. "So I'm a big supporter of that journalistic commandment — as it applies to other organizations."

The article ends by fawning over the very well-documented fact that Denton pays $10 per every thousand new visitors. Maybe such information is still news to some people.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

The company, which owns both The Washington Post and Slate Group, was sinking millions keeping Newsweek afloat before audio magnate Sidney Harmon purchased it for the grand total of one dollar. The embattled publication, one of the nation's best-known weekly magazines, still has no editor. 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Its place atop the Twitter totem pole was prearranged — it's a "promoted trend," which ensures it will stay on the list, right there above #bieber4australia. But while topics have mostly been bought by, for example, film studios hyping a movie, the organization backing #Election is none other than The Washington Post. As a spokesperson for Twitter told Poynter, it is the first time a media organization has promoted a hashtag on the social networking site, marking a type of collaboration that might predict how the old guard will utilize the microblogging service's ranking functions in the future.

When a Twitter user clicks on #Election on the left sidebar — or whenever it's included in a tweet — the aggregated tweets containing that hash tag will be filed under a tweeted link to a Post story. The message that the paper now has in that prime real estate says "Can Michelle Obama give Harry Reid the boost he needs? A last-minute campaign swing." Then it links to the story.

With such a fast-track to Twitter's showcase of the moment's most vital topics, The Washington Post is making a bid to be the indispensable resource for all things election day, at least in the eyes of Twitter devotees. Though it will certainly give the paper's website some sort of boost today, the "Election" hashtag is essentially worthless by tomorrow. The Poynter story doesn't indicate how much the paper paid for the exposure, but it will take more than one day befor any real integration between Twitter's 140-character bulletins and something like the Post's fully formed news reporting can take place. 

Regardless of how many extra hits the deal brings the Post, this kind of stunt will most likely take place again. As Twitter grows it will become a more accurate reflection of the world's news pulse, and at this point we can agree that even our oldest and most cherished media organizations need Twitter more than Twitter needs them. With the estimated value of Twitter now equal, or perhaps higher, than that of The New York Times, this is becoming less and less surprising. 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

This morning, Dana Davis Rehm, the public broadcasting network's senior vice president for marketing, explained on the This Is NPR blog why top brass put a ban on the supremely hyped events. The memo explained that NPR singled out Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive because it was not "obvious to everyone that these were overtly political events. It's different with the Colbert and Stewart rallies; they are ambiguous."

Rehm signed off by asking other newspapers and broadcast outlets to chime in and state their policies, with the presumed intent of trying to drum up support for NPR's maligned ban. Michael Calderone went fishing for answers, and it turns out that NPR now has a few more allies in its definition of journalistic ethics. 

A statement from NBC echoed NPR's objections, albeit with a potential loophole: "NBC News prohibits employees who function in an editorial role from participating at partisan events, however on a case by case basis we have permitted msnbc hosts to participate in such events."

The Washington Post allows for a bit more breathing room — in a memo to newsroom managers they differentiate between "participating," which they define as wearing buttons and buying t-shirts, and "observing, as journalists do." No word on how the bosses are going to regulate that policy come Oct. 30, but that's what they have.

The New York Times also coughed up a statement that said they view the rallies as serious political events "despite the comic/satirical elements," and don't want attendance to "raise any questions about our impartiality."

It remains to be seen whether these policies will be followed, and bringing up the issue is only raising the profiles of the rallies. Regardless of whether Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are joking, these two events have become serious business. 

nfreeman@observer.com

Twitter: @NFreeman1234

Yes, illustrated cartoons of the Islamic leader in a Danish newspaper prompted worldwide furor in 2006. But this Sunday edition of Non Sequitur does not include a depiction of Muhammad anywhere in the strip despite its reference to last May's "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day," during which people actually did include the religious figure in sketches. The Post feared uproar from religious groups anyway, and pulled the piece from the paper. Ombudsman Andrew Alexander took to his column yesterday to criticize the censorship, and warn readers that setting this sort of a precedent — pulling something that does no more than imply an offensive thing — could lead to further incidents of what many letters to the paper called "cowardice." 

The religious leader's absence from the comic is its punchline, and by banishing the strip The Post is only reinforcing the humor at play, Non Sequitur artist and writer Wiley Miller told Alexander. 

"The wonderful irony [is that] great newspapers like The Washington Post, that took on Nixon... run in fear of this very tame cartoon, thus validating the accuracy of the satire," he told the ombudsman via e-mail.

When asked why he backed the yanking of the cartoon, Brauchli claimed "the point of the joke was not immediately clear" — which is not only condescending to the bulk of his readers with the knowledge to comprehend it, but also a weak justification in general. If comics were cut from the paper because the joke was not immediately clear, there would be more blank spaces than ink on the funny pages. 

"It was a hard decision for me to make because newsprint is in my veins and I have worked here for almost three decades," Mr. Kurtz told The Observer on the phone this afternoon. "But once I was able to clear that psychological hurdle I liked a lot of what Tina had to say and the role that she laid out for me."  

Mr. Kurtz has worked at the Post since 1981 in a number of roles, most recently as a media columnist. He said that he "essentially grew up" at the newspaper.

We asked Mr. Kurtz if it felt like selling-out to leave the Post for a news website. "I don't know why anyone would say that," he said. "What I like about The Daily Beast is that it's a very solid journalistic enterprise. It practices journalism without paper. I'm spending more and more of my time online."

"In the case of The Daily Beast, I have no hesitation because the quality of the contributors are extremely high and there are good editors overseeing what they do," Mr. Kurtz added. He also noted that the site pays its contributors and that is important to him as a professional journalist.  

Mr. Kurtz said that he was excited by the chance to help craft Washington Coverage at The Beast, which turns two-years-old tomorrow. "At the moment there are a number of excellent Washington contributors, and I am going to write and report at my usual breakneck pace. But over time we hope to expand the bureau and I'd very much like to be a part of that," Mr. Kurtz said. "Watch that space."

The Observer asked Mr. Kurtz if his move to The Beast had anything to do with a potential deal between Newsweek owner Sidney Harman and Barry Diller. "The short answer is no," Mr. Kurtz said. "I had no idea what will happen at Newsweek and I made my decision based on wanting to work for The Daily Beast. Period."

zturner@observer.com / @zekeft

The Daily Beast is coming up on its second anniversary tomorrow. Mr. Kurtz wrote about the site when it launched in 2008. "It is an intriguing experiment, and not just for the 54-year-old Brown," Mr. Kurtz wrote. "The Web is packed with liberal sites, conservative sites and destinations that link to every other site on the planet. Brown is promoting herself as a tastemaker-in-chief, serving up such features as 'Cheat Sheet,' touting must-reads, and 'Buzz Board,' in which famous people recommend everything from books to boots."

Mr. Kurtz will keep his CNN Sunday show Reliable Sources. Ms. Brown was a guest on the show last month to talk about Glenn Beck and how the media is covering President Obama.