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Go to the grocery store every day. Several of them. Seriously
- kick 7y agoI upmodded this not because the content is good (it's kind of disturbing in most ways because consumerism-as-comfort is inherently so, though the core advice is sound), but because it highlights an oddity in publishing I've noticed recently. So this person is an executive at an advertising agency (it undersells him somewhat in the Post's author's bio box). What's his motive? He doesn't have to have one, of course, so let's put that as an option. Does his agency work with consumer goods businesses? You check their website, and the answer is "yes." So another possibility, then, is that his agency works with large grocery store chains or similar. You look at his most recent posting on that site, and it's a hit piece on a (fairly bad, actually) business aimed at the same demographic his agency claims to be able to target. In it, he also recommends the demographic in question goes, shops, and makes food themselves. Sketchy so far, you think. But then you look at his other posts on the WWW for this sort of thing. Almost exclusively, they're about how others should buy and prepare their own meals. He's been on this beat for at least seven years and probably more: he had an op-ed in The New York Times on exactly this in 2013. At this point, it gets close to impossible to figure out if it's some odd attempt at content marketing (likely, given that's what his company claims to do), or just a fun obsession (also likely, given his monofocus). I've been noticing this thing more and more when I read more or less any op-ed. It's fascinating to me.
- perl4ever 7y agoFollowing people who have a niche they're into can be a reaction to distrusting journalists in general. They aren't fungible.