Portland Food and Drink

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Food Writer Karen Brooks Dumped as Part of Oregonian Purge

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Karen Brooks, dining editor for the Oregonian was laid off this week.

Newspaper IconAs the newspaper industry has crumbled over the past few years, many long-term Oregonian employees have been offered excellent buyout packages. Apparently, Karen never took advantage of those offers. Now she has been laid off.

Perhaps her long tenure with previous publisher Fred Stickel had her feeling pretty secure, but Mr. Stickel’s replacement, Christian Anderson, seems to be changing the direction the paper is going.

My sources tell me much more of the day-to-day writing will be done by freelancers – a significantly cheaper option for the newspaper, as they will no longer need to worry about things like benefits and paying a living wage.

Karen Brooks was once the dominant reviewer in the Portland market, with wonderfully written reviews, back in the days when most newspapers devoted more of a budget to restaurants. With the O’s increasing use of freelance writers, her star has faded somewhat over the years, but she still wrote an occasional review and broke a lot of food news. I am sure many will miss her (despite the things she may have said behind their backs).

My condolences to laid-off staffers. New jobs in the newspaper industry are difficult to find.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. johnny says

    I’ve been soured on the Oregonian since they raised the price to a dollar althoughI’m sure that’s what they had to do . I looked at the help wantend ads on a Sunday a few weeks ago and there were only two ads just a few years ago it was half a page.. I’m afraid Newspapers are going the way that trains went last century in to oblivion . Its not just the Oregonian almost all the major newspapers are in trouble. We all need to start taking ads out in them and buying them or they’ll be a thing of the past

    • JandJ says

      I’m sorry to see the Oregonian experience the problems that it’s having — have tried to be a regular subscriber and supporter to the extent possible. I hate to see anyone lose their job, so condolences to Ms. Brooks. However, I haven’t been a fan of where food writing has been going at the O for many years now, and under her leadership in particular. Some of their restaurant reviews and ROY choices have been borderline laughable. I’m hoping this will be an opportunity for the editors to take this in a different direction and perhaps bring on some fresh talent. I’m not optimistic, but there’s always hope.

  3. Chumbly says

    Am I the only one who really won’t miss Karen Brooks or Grant Butler though? I feel kind of bad about this. As a reader of the Oregonian and food person here in PDX, I have to say it.

    The AE food writing was often really stale – sure it was journalism but it was boring. Same voices year after year after year and incredibly predictable. I feel like Karen and Grant might have worked hard and done their time, but Portland has changed so much and they seemed to always be one beat behind the past 5 years. What once gave them cultural authority and food knowledge, now makes them look she is grasping to “discover” the next thing and take credit for it and the rest of the city has gotten sophisticated so they no longer appear to be so authoritative about Dim Sum or that crazy ethnic food. That might of worked in 2000 when Portland was smaller and her only competition was Willy Weak, but times have changed! I’ll give Karen big kudos for her Lucier review because it was snark exemplified and quite entertaining, but it was so late coming that it was already sticking a stake in a dead man. There was always a clubbiness between her and certain restaurateurs too (specifically Bruce Carey and Andy Richer) that made many of us cringe. It was painfully obvious she plays favorites and was friends with certain chefs, but she’d write about them anyway and never print anything negative. They were so late getting on board of certain trends, but then trying to appear like they “discovered” those trends. It is a joke. Like the whole food cart thing. I never saw a peep about food carts from the Oregonian until late last year after everyone and their uncle all around the world had already covered them. And this vegan thing from Grant Butler. Pleeze. Shark meet grant. Grant meet shark. Didn’t the Mercury do a Vegan for a month thing about three years ago?

    Karen was also pretty unfriendly to bloggers in town. Constantly poo-pooing them and dissing them, even in public settings. It was tacky. Her disdain of this site and the food dude is notorious and unlike her peers Martha and other writers and editors she very rarely gave credit or mentioned when she got info from certain food websites and blogs even if it was obvious she got her info from those blogs. Not sure if it was territorial pissing or insecurity or arrogance or what, but what it did was end up isolating her further and further from her readers and the public. Once again, shows how out of touch certain writers at the O are in the world of how it works in new media. Kind of sad because she had some good opportunities to really connect with the food community (even just online) and she never really did. Martha is an example of doing it right, embracing and acknowledging bloggers rather than pretending they don’t exist.

    Finally, while I’m letting the snark out, I’ll just let it out. For someone who claimed to want to be anonymous she sure dressed in a way that does nothing but make her stand out. I’ve seen her butt crack a lot due to some bad fitting jeans, man. Nothing like a woman in her late 50s dressed like a grunge teenager with a big magenta streak in her long dark hair to stand out at a nice restaurant. Anyone including Mr Magoo could figure out when she was in their restaurant reviewing it.
    If this is mean sorry but I’ve been holding it in for years! Anyway, best of luck to all the people at the O. It’s sad this town can’t have a good neewspaper but the Oregonian has never really been a good newspaper at least in my 30 years here.

    • JandJ says

      I hate to say it, but there’s VERY little to disagree with in here. Well said, and alas, quite accurate on all counts.

    • Humble Pie says

      “They were so late getting on board of certain trends, but then trying to appear like they “discovered” those trends. It is a joke. Like the whole food cart thing. I never saw a peep about food carts from the Oregonian until late last year after everyone and their uncle all around the world had already covered them.”

      The O picked a food cart as a standout in 2008’s Diner, pretty much starting the whole freak-out. You must have been too busy seething.

  4. Kerry DeBuse says

    As a veteran of almost fifty years in the Portland restaurant business, I wish to convey to Karen Brooks my warm and most sincere thanks for her unparalleled contributions to the city’s food scene. Karen came to Portland almost four decades ago and found our contemporary restaurant culture in its infancy. Year after year, she nurtured new ideas and new talent.

    As the former owner of Genoa, a restaurant which is devoted to traditional food, I was sometimes irked that Karen was forever championing the “new” and the “hot”. But, make no mistake, she has had a larger influence on Portland dining (many beloved ethnic spots and the currant fave — food carts — are good examples) than any other single individual.

    Karen brings her loves and her biases to our communal table. We never have to guess where her heart lies. Has Karen Brooks mellowed a bit as time has progressed and Portland’s food community has grown into a vital adolescence? I don’t think so. Karen is just as sharp and just as focused as ever. Fortunately for us all, her focus has never strayed from the city she so clearly loves.

    Thanks Karen. Wishing you well as you move forward.

  5. KingofAlberta says

    Thanks for being honest. The Oregonian is hands down one of the worst “big” newspapers in the country. The only reasons they’ve been around this long is because of the lack of competition. Brooks was a mediocre reviewer at best. There are much better writers on this site.

    • sabernar says

      I would add the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to the ‘worst big city newspapers’. I’m not sure which is worse.

  6. Techchef says

    I am dancing for joy over Karen Brooks losing her job. She was the worst critic in town for over thirty years. I am sorry for the others though.

    Back in the day serious cooks and chefs in town would joke if you didn’t have a stir fry or home frys on the menu she would give you a bad review. It was true too. She played huge favorites in town. most of her recent articles and so called reviews were written more like advertising for her friends.Hardly honest reviews or articles.
    In the 80’s and early 90’s when people were trying to move Portland dining to what is now she panned, tore up or ignored a lot of cutting edge people and restaurants.some of these places and chefs were rated the best in the city and region by national writers and magazines.

    Take a look at David Sarasohn’s review of the new Genoa. This is a great example of how one should be written.

  7. GingerPDX says

    My condolences to anyone who loses their job, but I agree with Chumbly. Brooks had too many personal food issues to be a restaurant critic. The last time I waited on her she requested substitutions to every dish ordered.

  8. extramsg says

    I don’t know what things were like 20 years ago. I haven’t been here that long. I don’t have the years of personal resentment towards people I barely know that seems to be fully realized in the TMZ age. But I have been here during the rise of the internet and the blogs. I complained about the Oregonian’s food coverage back when I started Extramsg. They had become staid and predictable. Then, I think, it was the Willamette Week that was Portland’s best print food writing.

    But if you think that the dining section of the Oregonian hadn’t responded to the blogs, hadn’t evolved, hadn’t made a real, successful effort to improve itself, you weren’t paying attention. Instead of taking some print media’s approach and largely ceding food writing to the web, they made an extra effort to explore Portland beyond the inner core, made an effort to beat the blogs to news, gave their writers adequate space to give a true review, changed how they did their requisite “best ofs”, surveys, and lists to highlight less prominent restaurants, and so on. Especially coupled with what Martha Holmberg was doing, Karen Brooks as the person leading the dining section, made the Oregonian clearly the best source of food journalism in Portland. (I was very hopeful for Portland Monthly for a while there, but that too didn’t last.) I explore the city’s small little dives and ethnic restaurants, always on the lookout for something new or different, more than any other person I know and I’d been introduced to places and dishes I hadn’t heard of through the cheap eats columns and best bites.

    And come on, I love the blogs obviously, but none of us have the resources to do what the professional media can do. And the more the blogs directly compete with the newspapers, such as with fine dining reviews, the fainter their luster in comparison.

    If print is making any mistake, it’s not Chumbly’s apparent wish that they be even more like the blogs, raise the level of snark and unprofessionalism, and emphasize rumor and celeb sightings. It’s that they haven’t yet defined themselves apart from what the blogs, Yelp, PortlandFood.org, Chowhound, and the like can do well. They need to promote and sustain quality writing, engaging narratives, and real information. (And we need to recognize their efforts and advocate for it and support it ourselves.) Stories’ column inches should be increasing, not decreasing. We should come away feeling like there’s no other place we could have learned or experienced what we did in their writing. I really hope Chumbly’s desire is not print’s future.

    I never felt any animosity from Brooks or other Oregonian writers/editors despite aggressively challenging their articles at times — and I’ve been doing this longer than Food Dude or nearly anyone else in town. But perhaps you get what you give: fairness receives the same in return. Or maybe it’s because I embraced my shadow journalist role and was just happy to have influence in articles and see places that would otherwise not get the recognition they deserve receive that recognition. Of course, the Oregonian never borrowed the name, approach, features, and layout of my sites while not only not-linking to news they had grabbed, but actively preventing links, like others did. Karen Brooks never sent me ranting emails calling me names like some bloggers have.

    I haven’t always agreed with Brooks’s reviews, her point of view, her palate, etc. Just like any other reviewer. But I think, especially in the last few years, that she tried to improve food journalism in Portland and had largely succeeded in making significant strides forward. I respect what she did. Her lay-off is a loss and a bad omen for literate Portland food lovers.

  9. FoodRebel says

    Oh joy and happiness! That’s going to panic a few brown nosed restaurant owners and chefs around town!!!
    Good riddance. That woman was just too biased.

    • Beaujolais says

      Karen Brooks has singlehandedly done more for PDX chefs, restaurants, diners, cafes, bistros, ethnic eateries, food carts, supper clubs, cofeehouses – and thousands, possibly millions- of the dining public. Of course she had a point of view as a reviewer – it’s what separates the good ones – the ones with integrity – from the hacks. Her reviews were always well-articulated, well-defended and utterly democratic. She judged an espresso from a food cart with the same standards she applied to a posh eatery.

      No one cared about Portland dining as much as Karen. Her search for quality, creativity and value put Portland on the national culinary food map – witness all the accolades and articles in the New York Times, Gourmet, Food and Wine, etc etc about local restaurants and chefs she championed. She shined a light on many a nascent food trend – ethnic dining & food carts to name a couple. In terms of livelihoods – a lot of folks – from chef, to rest. backer, to provisioner to waitstaff -owe her a debt of gratitude for the attention she’s given to places that would probably have failed.

      Her leaving the Big O is just another nail in its pathetic coffin. She will go on to better things – cream always rises to the top.

      • Bella says

        A bunch of hooey. Karen didn’t “single handily” do anything. Portland restaurants put Portland restaurants in those great articles, if was due to Karen then Portland would have been on the culinary map and in all those publications you mentioned in 1995 not 2005. If anything Karen was reactionary – jumping on a trend AFTER others had written about it. She was also one of the most unprofessional people I’ve ever had the misfortune of working with. Sloppy, far from impartial, and indeed unbalanced in her reviews. She played favorites with her buddy Bruce to the very end, and that’s not good reviewing, that’s nepotism.

      • buddhababe says

        Karen Brooks wrote for the Oregonian with integrity and honesty and she will be deeply missed by anyone who really cares and knows about good food and dining. The O made a dreadful mistake in getting rid of her…join me in canceling your subscription to the paper! All that will be left to read are boring ads, police and fire reports.

  10. sweetnsavory says

    Ms. Brooks was not the most astute reviewer and showed some bias to some older establishments. However, her job was to put it out there professionally to the masses-more than a blogger (“professional” or otherwise) ever has to. Rather than lambast the messenger, pisses me off that there will be no more reviews at the Oregonian. Or will they start posting blog entries?

  12. homer's son says

    As to sweetandsavory’s comment about “posting blog entries” … much of their food writing lately seems to be pastiche of press releases … their weird attmept at recommendations for Valentine’s Day dining is a case in point.

  13. Bella says

    Willamette Week declared 2008 Year of the Food Carts in their cheap eats guide with a whole cover story and the launch of their food cart festival months before the O did in 2007. Also, the whole food cart thing had been building online way before the O decided they were rven in existence. ExtraMsg had his taco truck guide and Portland Food Carts.com has been around way longer and both those sites were already really popular by 2007. Typical for the O to take credit where credit isn’t due. Once again they were behind the curve, not trend setters.

  14. glainie says

    I wish Karen’s review of Micah Camden’s first foray in Portland was still available. The Matador? Something like that…it was in the Pearl. If I recall, she gave the the place a D-. By comparison, her Lucier review was a love letter. Nepotism aside, I will miss her.

  15. JDG says

    Oh, extramsg, if you had only left off that first sentence of your post your point might have carried some weight. Those who live in glass houses should not throw darts, or something like that. It only serves to remind me how much you have tempered your criticism and tone since you yourself became a restaurant owner.

  16. Cuisine Bonne Femme says

    I wish Karen Brooks the best of luck moving forward. I only met her once when she gave a talk about her work at a Portland Jewish Women’s Forum group, but my impression is that she is absolutely passionate about what she does and Portland. Say what you will about her, but she certainly helped contribute to the food writing scene and leaves a unique stamp on Portland’s culinary history. My condolences to all the others at the Oregonian who have lost their jobs as well. Lots of talented, hardworking people at that paper and I’m hopeful many of them will be able to move on quickly to other opportunities.

  17. polloelastico says

    I liked her writing. Still do. She sang the praises of HA&VL early. I can understand why some in the industry hate her, just like many bands hated Lester Bangs. And no, you spittle-laced reactionary cretins, I’m not saying Karen Brooks is the Lester Bangs of food criticism.

    If you’re a critic and you don’t piss off a few people then you simply aren’t doing your job.

    As for the Oregonian, there’s not much to say either way. The death of this business model die and the shift of a paradigm is hardly specific to our burg’s local fish wrap.

  18. CO says

    I could seriously give two wet farts about The O or Karen Brooks. That being said, one of the most glaringly bad observations/bitches I ever saw attributed to her was in her Lucier review. I remember her whining about siting in the LOUNGE and having to stoop over to eat her appetizer. Seriously, she complained about sitting in a recliner basically, and trying to eat a sous vide duck egg w/ caviar off a coffee table. Hysterically bad/par for the course with her.

  19. What's for supper? says

    In reading her increasingly rare reviews over the last several years it often seemed to me that Ms. Brooks had, as a critic and a journalist, perhaps stayed at the party too long.

    That being said, how do critics stay sharp, above the trend, relevant – especially an era when opinions, news, and the grey area in between can travel at the speed of light? How does anyone, really, know when he or she has said what there is to say and it’s time to go?

  20. sideline says

    Karen is a great woman who has a fantastic sense of umami. To not recognize her contribution to the pdx dining scene would be a stupid act. Now let’s just see if the Oregonian can pull out of their own slump. I myself look at the Oregonian just as many look at a floundering restaurant. The tides sure have changed.

  21. doza says

    Agreed that she was too biased. Most of the restaurants she praised I will agree are great, but how many times do you need to read about how good they are? I’m sure these establishments won’t be hurting that bad as the best and most popular places to enjoy food and drinks are still busy. There are many restaurants and new places opening in town and I am much more interested in knowing what they offer than jocking the “celebrity” chefs of Portland.

  22. John says

    I think two things are funny: how someone can be the chief food critic in a city for so long – a crime and secondly, how obvious it is that too many people are out of work given how much time they have to sit and write this complete on this site. You’re all as boring as her reviews.

  23. Bella says

    Hey HumblePie, learn to navigate The O’s website: there’s an archive link to the left of the Diner section. Here’s a better idea. If Im wrong, then show me the proof. Where in the 2008 Diner does it show Karen Brooks was on top of the food cart trend rather than behind it? How many times did the O write about Food Carts in 2008, especially before the summer or fall – long after other pubs had caught on? Otherwise crawl back into your hole. You have no clue what you are talking about. Much like Ms. Brooks. A simple archive search on the O is easy to do. I’ve done it, have you?

  24. Pdxfooddude says

    Any comments that aren’t civil will be edited or deleted. Please respect each other.

  25. Food Sleuth says

    This pissing over who was first at the news table is annoying, but it was something Brooks seemed to strive for in her journo “angle” so it’s well worth examining. She loved being the first to scoop something, whether it was a trend or a restaurant, and for a long time BB (Before Blogs) she was indeed queen of it. Thus, this whole rise of food blogs in Portland must have been a particularly difficult rub for her as others started to beat her to the punch. That said, Bella and others are correct here. Karen and the other Oregonian writers barely mentioned Food Carts at all in most of 2008, and certainly not in the Diner or Quick Bites inserts. Obvious glaring omissions from a cultural journalism perspective. Karen didn’t really catch on to the carts until long after the national media did. Her top ten carts article, her only real article about the carts, didn’t appear until the summer of 2009. This was after everyone in town and the New York Times had “broken” the food cart trend story in Portland on a national level. Perhaps that was finally validation for her to embrace them.

    Karen read tired and unmotivated these past couple of years to someone who has been following her since she started at the Oregonian. She didn’t write with that spark she once had and was and more formulaic. Karen busted loose a couple of times, her Lucier review for example was pure Dorthy Parkerish wit and vitrol, and her picks of 2 shared restaurants of the year in 2008 was genius. For this I mean the side by side comparisons of the two were playful, well researched and carefully crafted. She could be a bang out food writer and cultural observer when she was inspired. Yet for whatever reasons, she didn’t find things like food carts that inspiring until long after that train had left the station.

    Although let’s talk about the real problem here. The Oregonian’s website blows. Bad writing or editorial aside, their website is so horrible that it’s certainly not helping the Oregonian’s cause for anything. There are so many broken links, incorrect links, and other messed up information, it’s pathetic. It appears that search results listing the 2008 Diner Guide in whole links to the 2009 Diner Guide, but individual articles from 2008 are listed. All this talk about the web killing newspapers. In the case of the Oregonian, it’s a case of a newspaper killing itself.

    Luckily we have access to Multnomah County Library’s much better Oregonian archive system. After this little headache inducing research exercise, I’ll never search the Oregon’s website again.

  26. polloelastico says

    Who “broke” the food carts news is the stupidest argument I’ve encountered in some time. Reminds me of high school when I would claim I was the first idiot amongst my friends to listen to some band before MTV started playing their video.

    • Food Dude says

      I think they are speaking of trends in general, not just food carts. That’s just an example some have used

  27. Beaujolais says

    Karen Brooks reviewed places like Moxie on Mississippi and Fold Creperie
    long before there was an official “cart” scene. And for those unfamiliar with
    how a big daily works, as the O’s Dining Editor, she was drove restaurant
    coverage, even if she didn’t write the articles.

    A&E food writer Christina Melander wrote about Tabor in A&E, right after it opened.
    A&E was the first to discover Spella Caffe food cart. A&E ran a cover story on
    the 12th and Hawthorne food cart scene just as it was taking off. Sugar Cube was
    the cover of the Best Bites guide shortly after it opened.

    Diner was focused on restaurants, and every cart reviewed might have taken away
    from limited space for restaurants. These were probably hard calls to make,
    but Karen Brooks is the one who made them.