The Dallas Morning News commits to hiring a new restaurant critic.
After more than four years, the DMN will publish restaurant reviews again. Sometime. We’re not sure when.
This news is buried in a job posting for the DMN’s new Food Editor. The News is currently down to just two food reporters, Sarah Blaskovich and Imelda García, but the listing for the new editor says they will also supervise “a restaurant critic and a food digital producer.”
This is great news. It’s been a shame that the DMN food desk has been down to 50 percent staff since reporter Claire Ballor and food editor Anna Butler left early this spring. But it’s arguably even more of a travesty that the DMN hasn’t employed a full-time restaurant critic since the end of 2019.
In that time, the DMN ran a handful of freelance restaurant reviews labeled “restaurant columns.” (I wrote them.) The last such “column” was published in April 2022. As I wrote in a column last year urging the News to return to the format, “Reviews start conversations, push for higher standards, and show us who we are through what we eat. In a media environment full of influencers and clickbait, investing in a good critic means believing that you can succeed through expertise, not search rankings.”
It sounds like Hearst listened to my advice. When the DMN hires its critic, the new person will join a Hearst critical stable that includes Bao Ong in Houston, Mike Sutter in San Antonio, Matthew Odam in Austin, and Mackenzie Chung Fegan in San Francisco.
By the way, one more tidbit from the food editor job listing: “In our newsroom, you will use AI.” The listing provides examples: headline ideas, copy editing, creating video and social media versions of stories, and “human-verified” data processing. The DMN also mentions a “strategic content partnership” with OpenAI.