What's the Rush? - Eater Sticks With Story After Bisnow Retracts It

[deangold]

Two of the food aggregators have posted today that a certain restaurant is closing. Bisnow Dining, the first one has apparently taken down the post. Eater has left their post up. Why? Don't people know that rumors of a restaurant's imminent demise can be self fulfilling? That staff can walk? That staff can be terrorized by false rumors? That business can drop off precipitously making a bad situation worse?

What's the rush?

[DonRocks]

Two of the food aggregators have posted today that a certain restaurant is closing. Bisnow Dining, the first one has apparently taken down the post. Eater has left their post up. Why? Don't people know that rumors of a restaurant's imminent demise can be self fulfilling? That staff can walk? That staff can be terrorized by false rumors? That business can drop off precipitously making a bad situation worse?

What's the rush?

I know the backstory here, and let's just say it involves one *very* angry chef. This is just a guess, but when you're an aggregator website, such as Eater, it may be in your company's best interest to disavow any responsibility of the stories you aggregate, and take a blanket, no-exceptions policy toward deleting stories that are retracted (this could possibly absolve Eater of any legal responsibility involving diligence). Regardless, I have it straight from the horse's mouth that this story is potentially very damaging.

Now, as to why dr.com isn't being aggregated alongside the rest of the world, I don't have a clue. It's not because we're too big (the Washington Post is much bigger than we are), it's not because we're too small (plenty of smaller blogs get aggregated), it's not because we're irrelevant (much of our content is *exactly* what Eater's readers are looking for), it's not that we're competition (we are content-driven; they are aggregators), it's not that we're on bad terms (Google site:donrockwell.com eater.com and you'll find huge numbers of links to Eater from us (and incidentally, this very query reminded me to update the title of Eater's thread to include Missy Frederick as the new editor)). So, it must be some other reason, and if you can figure it out, please let me know because I'd sure like us to be included there from time-to-time. I have nothing against them; yet, we're deliberately being excluded (or at least not being properly cited).

[Pat]

The Eater post is still up but has a note that the Bisnow post has been taken down.