Sam Sifton looks like a good guy. But as he gets ready to begin his new job as the hired gut of The New York Times, that’s caused a minor controversy.
By all accounts Sifton, The Times’ culture editor who was named this week to replace Frank Bruni as arguably the most powerful dining critic in the country, is in fact a good guy. That’s not the problem.
It’s that he looks like one, and anybody who’s interested knows it. As soon as his appointment was announced Wednesday, Sifton’s picture went viral on the Web, neatly blowing the traditional anonymity that has long been jealously guarded by his predecessors and thoughtful restaurant critics throughout the industry. It’s provoked a tiny tempest in a stew pot.
Sam Sifton
The theory is that if restaurant workers recognize those who are paid to judge them, special efforts will be made to provide perfect service, exemplary dishes, and an experience that’s not typical for the average diner. But the truth, as experienced restaurant critics know, is that a mediocre restaurant can’t transform itself into a great one when it learns it’s being watched, and a great one is already too busy doing what it does to be much concerned about it.
Still, The Times removed Sifton’s mug shot from its website, and Sifton took it down from his Facebook page, in a pro-forma attempt to render him faceless. But the face was already out of the bag, prompting Gawker to challenge readers to give him Photoshopped disguises.
Whether he wears Groucho glasses, dresses in drag, or sports a pirate’s eye patch, Sifton will be doing his dining deeds in a time when social networking, search engine caches, and online sleuths render anonymity nearly impossible.
Clearly recognizing this, Times executive editor Bill Keller responded to reader concerns by “noting that anonymity has long been less than perfect.
“A review is almost always based on multiple, unannounced visits at different meals, and a reviewer’s own experience can be cross-checked with intelligence from others. So, while we don’t intend to put Sam’s face on sides of MTA buses, I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over this. And, don’t forget, New York has some of the world’s best cosmetic surgeons.”
And in an email to WWD, Sifton also breezily addressed the issue:
“There’s absolutely no upside to talking about how exactly we’re going to go about reporting and reviewing restaurants now, in this era of Facebook and Google image search. Those are trade secrets!
“Anyway, I look different now. Pete Wells [The Times’ dining editor] sent me to the country for a week, and now none of my clothes fit and I’m using a comb for the first time since the 1990s.”
Sifton, 43, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard and former New York high school teacher, was a founding editor of Tina Brown’s abortive “buzz” magazine, Talk, and held several positions at the New York Press before joining The Times in 2001.
In a memo to staff, Keller called his latest appointment “both obvious and eccentric.
“It is obvious because, as a brilliant editor of the Dining section, as an occasional essayist on food for our magazine, and as a writer of discernment and wit and erudition, he is the best candidate any of us can think of. This is a marquee job for The Times, and our next critic will have the unenviable job of following Frank Bruni. It is an obvious choice, too, because the prospect of reading Sam on a regular basis brings big smiles to our faces.”
Sifton’s too. Take a look. It’s all over the Web.
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