Food bloggers and PRs to meet

Following a couple of online spats, isn't it time to get to know each other face to face?
Two child's toys shaking hands
Friendly face to face contact - always the best way to sort out differences.

This time last month the usually congenial world of food blogging was in something of an uproar. Earlier in the year US food bloggers had suggested a 'code of ethics' for those reviewing restaurants or products, there had even been hints at regulation. We, in our lovely British way, had played down the suggestion with, if not actually snorts of derision, at least the smug conviction that such things weren't for the likes of us.

The July spat started when Time Out's restaurant critic Charmaine Mok posted a piece on their blog that re-opened the debate about the relationship between food bloggers and PR companies. Are bloggers naive, untrained and, unbound by professional ethics, a danger to consumers? Are PRs exploiting this?

In truth this was probably most exciting to the folks at Time Out because it re-opens the old argument about anonymity of reviewers. Time Out doesn't have high profile reviewers like the national papers, so anything that keeps the anonymity argument alive makes them look good but Mok's post certainly got people talking. In fact, a rare old slanging match developed, the post was taken down and reposted with additional explanatory text and, later Mok posted a response.

So the Americans carried on with their increasingly complex rulebook, the Brits bickered via letters to the editor, but the Australians with characteristic forthright intelligence hired a room and invited food bloggers and food PRs to sit down and have a chat.

Seems obvious really. Bloggers often don't have much experience of how PRs work with the traditional press, PR's are surprised when the approach that works so well with regular hacks insults bloggers or causes upheaval and dark, paranoid accusations of corruption.

So a bunch of us have decided to do the same eminently sensible thing here. On Monday August 10, a group of UK food bloggers will meet with specialist food PRs for a friendly chat. There's no complicated agenda - we're not aiming to thrash out rules, codes or to form cliques or alliances - the idea is to try to understand how each group works so we can play nicer in the future.

If you're a blogger and you'd like to join us, everything is being organised via the Twitter hashtag #BPRsummit. Meeting face to face seems the best way to avoid online misunderstanding but we're aware that a London get-together isn't going to allow all the food blogosphere to participate so we've asked WoM to help. If you're a UK PR or food blogger, you can't make the meeting and you have any questions you'd like to put, post them here and Word of Mouth will ask them on your behalf.

We'll report back on the results of the meeting next week.