I've received quite a few e-mails asking about the Food Blog Awards and yes, they will be done this year, and yes, they will be on Well Fed again. Official announcement going up Monday with the list of categories in a call for nominations, but since this is such a great gathering place of food/wine bloggers, I thought you might want a heads up as well. Some wonderful prizes have been donated, including LeCreuset cookware and Sil-Pins for the winners of the different categories.
Just one question ... below is the list of categories that the FBA had last year. Are there any suggestions for an overlooked category? Want to make sure everything gets included.
Best Food Blog by a Chef
Best City Blog
Best Non Blogging Food Site
Best Group Food Blog
Best Food Blog - Writing
Best Blog Covering Wine, Beer or Spirits
Best Food Blog - Theme
Best Food Blog - Restaurant Reviews
Best Food Blog - Recipes
Best Food Blog - Photography
Best Food Blog - Humor
Best Blog Covering the Food Industry
Best New Food Blog
Best Post - Reader's Choice
Best Overall Food Blog - Reader's Choice
This Post was written by Cate from Sweetnicks and Well Fed.
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29 comments:
With all due modesty, I'd like to suggest the following category:
Best Food Blog Named "Seriously Good"
But more seriously (if less good), perhaps a category on presentation. My thinking is that some blogs truly meld together the design, the writer's style, and the primary focus to create a gestalt that is better than any of the single elements.
Best food blog by a trainee chef?
Just kidding, guys! I'm well pleased enough to get a few readers, never mind an award.
What about some clarification on the Recipes category? I know there was discussion last year about whether the recipes should be original (at least a good percentage of them) or if it was okay if they all came from cookbooks. Or maybe we need a category for Best Original Recipes?
What do other people think?
Might there be some rural counterpart to Best City Blog? There seem to be a lot of pretty good blogs coming from the hinterlands. . .
What about best meme? Best baking blog?
And, I know this sounds silly, but "best generalist blog" -- all the sub-genres have their own category, but those of us who dabble in recipes, reviews, and everything else are sort of left out.
Sorry, two more:
- Best special diet blog (vegans, low-carbs, etc)
- Best family/kids food blog
Ditto what Mimi said, even though I'm now in a medium-sized city. Blog awards in general seem to ignore rural blogs more often than not. Big city bias can get tired very fast.
Also, big ditto on the recipe clarification. Personally, I don't think anyone who just grabs recipes out of cookbooks should get award recognition for those recipes.
Wow - I'm sure glad I asked! ;)
Kevin - you crack me up.
Jennifer - I agree, clarification is definitely necessary.
Mimi & Mrs. D - Would Best Heartland Food Blog qualify as a title for rural, or is that too localized?
Anita - Best Baking Food Blog sounds like a wonderful idea. On Best Kids - do you think there are enough in that category to qualify for its own?
Good question, Cate. I don't like the word "heartland" myself because it's been too politically loaded of late and that in itself makes this category US-centric. Whatever the term, it should equally apply to a blog in the wilds of the tundra or the outback (or a small island in Northern Washington ;-P) and not just to farmland in the U.S.
how about best non-city dont-mention-the-word-heartland blog?
(I too dont like the heartland lingo, its been co-opted by red-pols way too much and for way too long)
umm.. how about Best Boonie Blog (thats a joke, dont use it!)
Funny how different one's perspective can be. When I think of heartland, I think of good old-fashioned values, green as far as the eye can see and Little House on the Prairie (loved that show!). But I can see the other side too - dang politicians.
"Heartland" means the geographically fuzzy middle of the country and all that implies. So while it might be a good award category, it would need its 'east coast' and 'southern' and 'west' and etc and etc counterparts and also exclude small towns in every other country. Not good!
But I (heartily) agree that it would be great for a contrast to the city blogs.
And I love the idea of an Original Recipes category ... and maybe a Best Family Recipes ...
Cate, great of you to pose the question!
Perhaps a category that considers beverage sites of the non-alcoholic persuasion?
yes! best teetotaler site - needs better name tho
What about best regional? If a city blog is supposed to best represent the culinary life of a particular city, would "regional" fit the rest of us?
I agree with Mrs. D on the recipes -- I would love to see that category award someone for invention and creativity, not someone who tests recipes that have already been published.
I concur on defining "best recipes" to mean "best original recipes." That doens't mean all the recipes have to be original, but the bulk of them should be.
(Sorry, I forgot I was logged in to my student's blog so I had to delete this the first time.)
I do original recipes and recipes from cookbooks both on my own blog, and I guess I do not concur that one is necessarily better than the other. When I read blogs I see wonderful posts for both original recipes and recipes from cookbooks, and I enjoy them equally.
I also worry about getting too specific with the categories. It would seem to me that the ideal approach would be to make categories as broad as possible so that more people would fit into the category. I'm not sure I even agree with all of the categories previously used for that reason, although I'd keep the topic oriented ones like photography, writing, humor, etc. Here are the types of broad categories I might add if I was running the world:
Home Cooking
Eating and Travel
Learning About Food
Focus on Food Products
Visionary Foodie
Plays Well With Others
Liquid Refreshments
Best Food Blog U.S.
Best Food Blog Europe
Best Food Blog Canada
Best Food Blog Asia / South Pacific
Best Food Blog India
Best Food Blog Africa
Best Food Blog South and Latin America
Anyway Cate, whatever categories you decide on I look forward to nominating some of my favorite blogs. I know you'll do a great job running it and I'm sure it's a big job, so thanks.
I think we should go with Kevin's suggestion, name one award for each blogger who cares and call it good. :-)
Given that 'roll your own' awards are not likely to happen. What I'd like to see is something that measures quality rather than who convinces people to click through and vote. Otherwise this is a popularity contest, right? Not sure how you do that, but I do question the point of the awards otherwise because they really aren't "best" at all, just heavily trafficked by people who click when asked. (i.e., If Stephen Colbert put up a blog tomorrow, put a single picture of a slice of pizza on it and then went on TV and told his thralls to go vote for it, he'd win...)
So, seriously what is the difference between the last two that are labeled a "reader's choice" and the rest? How are the others *not* reader's choice?
Trying to take off my curmudgeon hat for a moment, I am totally with the folk who think that original recipes are different. If there was a category for 'recipes from books' and one for 'original recipes' to distinguish the two, perhaps...?
re: heartland... I am one of the smallest town bloggers out there and I am NOT heartland. Nor am I particularly regional. I'm not even small town. (really, I was just reading an article where one of the southern states was removing small towns from their official state map, all the towns they erased were 2500 people or less--my entire county is not much bigger than that!)
how about a best professional blog category to get those out of the rest of the pool?
or just go back to my first idea and let everyone who cares have an award and let the rest of us skip the cheerleaders lobbying for votes for a month or more...
Just another best city blog award idea...how about offering several based on population?
Million and over
Over 100,000
Under 100,000
Over 10000
Under 10000
kitchenmage: i live in a town of about 1700 and we are def. not heartland .. more like lots o french canadian curmugeons who are related to everyone else in town (not me) and those who moved before the land prices expoded with zero family for miles (me).
I dont think of myself localized in this town when i blog, at all.. its irrelevant.. heck i could be blogging from marietta or fort worth or rancho cucamunga for all it mattered.
how about an award for the vaguest blog? :-)
As a (retired) judge from last years awards, I have to say, the judging is hard enough without another zillion categories.
My main gripe with last years category - no best design category. And the alcohol one should be changed to drink blog (without splitting it into two categories).
I agree that there could be a professional category as well as a category of 'best blog without ads'.
I noticed that city blogs were heavily weighty in all categories and wished there was a 'backcountry' category, but I can't think of a better name either.
Regional (by continent?) categories might be good, that's the way Nikolai at the Bloggies does it, although it adds 6 or 7 categories (the cook at the American Base in Antartica used to do a blog, but I think that's gone). Also nominations for this categories shouldn't just be the best blog in their area, but be the best about talking about or showcasing the food in that area. There were nominations in last years city category that you couldn't tell where they were.
One thing I don't think you shouldn't subject the judges to - a podcast or videocast category - there just isn't enough time to review them by the end of the year.
And kitchenmage, the reader's choice was just that - the judges didn't decide that one. The other categories' nominations were ruthlessly wittled down according to quality by last years judges, where they went back for votes, and then whatever was left came back to us for more ruthless grading. By ruthless I mean just one bad photo in the archive, or one sloppy post and they met with my axe. The competition was that tough.
This year I'm doing my own award - best blog who's sent me the most cookies.
Kalyn, what about Best Food Blog in Jersey, Channel Island??? lol.
Don't forget about me...? lol.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I read each and every one several times and took them all into consideration. A few new categories have been added, and I think I removed two (too tired at this point to rememeber). The official start is today, and you can read the entire announcement here. I've tried to keep it as fair as possible, but keeping an eye on not letting the catgory list run away.
Cate, I just noticed that there's a six post a month minimum on a lot of the categories. That eliminates 95% of the blogs that I read. Most people seem to blog on a weekly basis. I'm finding it very difficult to nominate anyone at all.
The 6 posts per month minimum also excludes several worthy bloggers who had to take time off from blogging for personal reasons, family emergencies, etc.
Last year, it was a four post minimum for a seven month period. I lessened the period to six months, but yes, I did increase the amount of posts a month to 6, from 4. Although there isn't hard scientific research, I don't think 1.25 posts a week is too much to ask for blogs being nominated, no? I haven't delved into the ones that this very slight post increase might exclude, but most of the ones I read post fairly regularly (a few times a week). Maybe I'm not visiting the right ones. ;)
Since I was the one making a fuss last year (blush) over the original versus reproduced recipe category, I am super happy to see I was not alone in that thought. So, that said, I second (third?) that as a separate category.
Rachael - your voices were heard and the categories were separated. You can see the announcement with the official list of categories right here.
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