Monday, April 13, 2009

Murfreesboro Magazine: "Ethic" Proportions



This is from the cover of this month's Murfreesboro Magazine, a publication produced by Gannett primarily as an insert for the Daily News Journal, though you can buy a subscription, though I can't imagine why you would.

This month, the magazine's cover story is on "ethic restaurants," though I have no idea what that means, unless they are talking about restaurants that employ questionable morals in the preparation of my food. I think they meant "ethnic" restaurants, which just shows that all the layoffs at Gannett clearly included anyone who can read.

I can undertand mistakes in a daily newspaper. Stories miss deadline, happen on deadline, and you have a daily pressure to get everything done in a limited amount of time. This is a monthly, glossy, four-color expensive product. You would think there would be some quality control. And someone to proofread the cover. But they must have all been on furlough when this went to press.

That said, I expected to read about multiple restaurants in the referenced cover story. I mean, the word was plural, right? However, I did not. The cover story featured one -- one restaurant! Murfreesboro probably has more ethnic restaurants per capita than any city in which I've ever been, and I'll include New York and San Francisco in that. Yet, apparently, only one restaurant made the cut. There's a very incomplete list of "ethnic" restaurants that's clearly a paid ad on the page before the story about Sushin, but that's it. And it places "Demos' Steak and Spaghetti House" under Mediterranean, though aside from spaghetti and lasagne, which has been Americanized to the point it's not Italian at all, it has nothing Mediterranean on the menu. And the list omits some of our most ethnic restaurants, such as Cuzco, which is an outstanding Peruvian restaurant (review coming soon on my food blog).

And while Sushin is good Sushi, it's not the best in the 'Boro. That belongs to Sakura, which isn't even on the list. I imagine Sushin got the feature story because it bid the highest for the honor. The entire "review" read more like an advertisement than an honest assessment of the food available. Yes, Sushin is good, but it's not nearly the quality the story made it out to be.

So, in a word, Murfreesboro Magazine sucks.

2 comments:

  1. Well said, sir.
    Also worthy of a mention is The Clay Pit, the finest Indian restaurant at which I've ever eaten, and also Fuji, a fabulous Japanese steakhouse, or the Golden Eagle.

    Nice proofreading, though. Classic Gannett. They wonder why newspapers are dying.

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  2. It is fortuitous that the blog's author can "undertand" mistakes.

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