Barf Blog Review

My first impression when I looked at Barf Blog was that it was simple.  The logo at the top reads “Barf Blog safer food from farm to fork;” beneath the large banner is a bar with the tabs “blog,” “Categories,” “Infosheet,” and “About US.”  There’s a search bar, a donate button, and a side column with the archives and a quick bio on the contributors.  I wasn’t sure if I liked it.  It was simple, yes, and easy to use, but something about it made me feel like the whole website was informal.  This impression was reinforced by the title “Gratuitous food porn shot of the day,” doubly so because I’ve only seen or heard the expression “food porn” on tumblr.

I decided to put my first impressions aside and read a few articles.  The first didn’t bode well.  A quick blurb describing the event preceded the article, and the rest was italicized.  At first I was irritated by the rapid fire barrage of facts (it gave the impression that the writer couldn’t be bothered to present them, and instead chose to just make a quick list of what was wrong).  A video was embedded at the bottom, and I spent about 2 and a half minutes watching the article I’d just read.  My reaction switch from irritation to indignation; I couldn’t believe that they’d really just stick a sentence on another person’s article and say that they deserve to publish it under a new name.  

When I scrolled down a bit, I saw that the next article was the same way.  I jumped up to the about us thinking that maybe it would say there that they were a collection of other sources.  Instead I found a quick paragraph that said they “offer evidence-based opinions.”  I bit my cheek at this claim, as in my quick scan I’d seen no opinions, just other people’s articles.  But I hit the back button, thinking that they deserved at least one more chance.

The next one had no italicized text, which was nice; I looked forward to seeing an article written by one of the writers.  The next one seemed to answer my hopes, although in the end it was more of a general transcript of a radio conversation.  I continued down, and found one (“Raw milk sickened scores despite inspections”) that fit everything I’d expected: it reported an event (raw milk was causing illness in children), stated an opinion (Adults can drink raw milk but don’t give it to kids), and although it did use primarily a news article it was one citing one of the authors of the blog (Doug Powell).  It was, however, rather disheartening that only one in five articles lived up to my expectations for a reliable blog about dangerous food.

Barf Blog ended up being a bit of a let down; it was more of a place for people to post interesting articles they found, rather than forming opinions, researching, and writing their own stories.  The blog isn’t all bad though; it does reference events in places other than the US, and it does make an effort to present the information quickly; unfortunately these good things (in my opinion) don’t make up for the disappointing parts of Barf Blog.