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Boston Magazine knows which side their scallion pancakes are buttered on
By adamg on Wed, 08/05/2015 - 11:26am
Now has a twice-yearly Chinese edition, aimed at the 147,000 Chinese tourists who visit the city and the 13,000 Chinese students studying in the Boston area.
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Comments
What year is this?
Who knew Boston magazine still existed? Talk about irrelevant.
Counterpoint
They still have a bad rap on the Best of Boston. As Brian McGrory once put it "You advertise with us!?! You're the Best!"
It is a cheerleading mag for the Back Bay / South End and W Town Crowd to stroke their ego, but their features and a good part of their news reporting isn't that bad.
Cut them some slack.
Although they do some decent
Although they do some decent reporting from time to time, and they aren't as bad about pimping their advertisers as Improper Bostonian, or the ultimate offender, Phantom Gourmet.
I've worked on the Best-of issues for both those
magazines, and while I don't always agree with the choices, I found surprisingly little influence from the sales side of the house (when I too had previously assumed it was all about the graft). I'd defend 90% of the choices in this year's Improper Bostonian Boston's Best food & drink awards, for instance. I lobbied for a lot of the winners, many of them places I'd reviewed in the previous year, and they often listened to me.
The most fun I had doing this kind of thing was with the Stuff Magazine Dining Awards, when for several years they let me make up new categories out of whole cloth every year (no "Best Neighborhood Whatsis" on my lists) and pick the winners (like 2009's "Susan Boyle Award for Unexpected Transcendence in a Homely Package", which I invented to award La Frontera in Eastie for its amazing house specialty, sopa de mariscos, which it serves in a very modest storefront setting).
I actually think this is Boston Magazine's best awards issue (for food & drink, at least) in many years. Lots of unexpected, worthy choices.
The Andelmans, on the other hand, have never met a restaurant they wouldn't strap on the kneepads for. It's a tidy living, financially if not ethically.
(On a side note, you won't find butter on many scallion pancakes: too low a smoke point. More likely peanut oil.)
I always like your writing.
I always like your writing. Didn't mean to imply otherwise.
No offense taken.
As I said, I had always assumed these awards at the slicks were pure tit-for-tat, too. My first experience of direct involvement was with BoMag in 2008, which handed me a chunk of awards categories (romantic, affordable, Vietnamese, hot dog, fried calamari, fried clams, fried onion rings -- you'd have a lot of bidders if you put these ones up for sale), let me choose the winners and had me write them up. Not what I'd expected.
The Improper uses a panel-of-"experts" approach. I'd say the panel went my way on almost all of the food/drink awards last year, and 90% my way this year. The places that won out over my choices were solid seconds in my book. It's not a science; I'm just one opinion.
It is amusing to see how much sponsor hog the Andelmans swallow every week, though. They've gotten slightly more sophisticated over the years. They used to praise a place in one segment, then run their ad on the same show -- not so subtle. Now when the sponsor gets an on-air knobby, they don't run their ad until the next episode.
They've got the Beacon Hill lobby thing going now, too. I imagine they're selling a package: "Buy a Restaurant & Business Alliance membership, and we'll give you a free hand-y on one of our Great Ate segments, and fight to squelch the food trucks in your neighborhood, and maybe throw in a TV ad." It's a pretty sweet racket.
He speaks the truth
I worked on the editorial side for several years at BoMag (and copyedited my fair share of MC Slim JB pieces, BTW), and to my knowledge, the Best-ofs were not rigged for advertisers. The selection of winners was done exactly as described here.
Do you feel cool now?
Ah yes, be trendy and trash the Globe. Surprised you didn't take a shot at DD's while you're at it and be doubly cool.
Believe it or not, there are some very good, local, feature articles in it. Yes, those home issues are useless and annoying, but who else is going to write the good stuff?
According to this Boston
According to this Boston Magazine I totally have, it's the year of the wood sheep.
Traditional?
Seems strange that they opted for traditional Chinese instead of simplified considering most of the area students are mainland Chinese. Everyone from the mainland of that age has grown up with an education in Mandarin and simplified Chinese even if they're from Cantonese speaking areas that would typically use traditional characters.
No mention in their pitch of the 120k+ Chinese living in Metro Boston either.
With shifting demographics in the region it makes sense to offer this but execution of similar initiatives is often awkward. Some Bank of Americas in the area started sporting posters and signs in Mandarin recently because BoA recognized the percentage of Chinese Americans in the area, but when I asked, none of them had any Mandarin speaking staff or resources.
Most of the students are
Most of the students are mainlanders, but most of the Chinese already living here are Cantonese speakers who grew up with Traditional.
Perhaps ...
But if you read their flier, Boston Magazine isn't much concerned about Chinese-Americans or Chinese already living here - they're specifically targeting tourists and college students.
Just about everyone who
Just about everyone who learned simplified Chinese can read traditional script. The same is not true for those who only learned traditional; older people, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese.
So to be inclusive and to target the most people, traditional Chinese is always used outside of mainland China.
I guess it's a moot point
I guess it's a moot point given that this magazine turned out to be in simplified Chinese, but I think it may be a bit more complicated than that.
I'm not a native speaker / reader, and thought similarly to you before, but a few years back I was excited to bring a northern Chinese relative who is an avid reader to a huge Chinese book store in the US, but when they got there they were bummed out because it turned out to stock only Taiwanese books. Even though they had novels she wanted, they were printed in traditional characters that are in vertical lines that start on the right of the page and move to the left, whereas mainland readers read left to right horizontal lines like we do. She said she technically could read the books but it would be a pretty miserable experience.
Does anyone know what the Boston area Chinese newspapers are in? Without one in front of me I think they're traditional but left to right, maybe that's somewhere in the area of a compromise to reach a broader readership?
Either way, it's cool to see Boston Magazine reaching out to this rapidly growing demographic in our area - even if it's just because they're clued in to the potential revenue they represent for area businesses.
It's Simplified Chinese
The Chinese copy on the magazine cover is in Simplified Chinese. The English copy states "Traditional" at the top of the copy and "Simplified" at the bottom.
I'm highly offended!
An all Chinese version of a magazine primarily written and edited by non-Asians? This sounds like a job for Amber Ying and her death threat dancers!
What do Chinese tourists
What do Chinese tourists marvel at when they visit Boston? Our clear skies. I'm sick of carbon tax advocates acting like we're as polluted as Beijing. Capitalism = clean. Communism = filth.