Some day the corporate executives who devised the wine club schemes might be immortalized in a newspaper- like movie sequel to “The Godfather.” Those real-life execs would watch the movie lounging at a long table, sipping their wines, and debating the merits of their respective vineyards. They’ll toast each other and wonder why they ever bothered to publish a newspaper.
There is a belief in the land that newspapers are bleeding red because of the digital revolution. That is one of those half-truths that have allowed the bottom liners in executive suites to have their way.
After years of fits and starts, newspapers have embraced the Internet, knocking out stories as fast as the wire services, updating them in the papers, and then updating them again. But becoming sommeliers is another story.
It is an ethical nightmare and a potential legal mess. Still, some of the most influential newspapers in the country are wine propagandists — publishing giants such as the Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
Here is the legal problem:
State laws won’t let people without licenses sell wines. The papers can accept orders, but those checks and credit cards are immediately transferred to companies that vineyards pick to distribute the wines. The only way the newspaper can receive any cash is through a marketing or consulting contract.
That’s why the papers have partnered with wine companies that have liquor licenses. Those partnerships are fraught with peril for the papers, especially in California where 87 percent of American wine grapes are grown.
The California Alcoholic Beverage Control agency recently sent out an industry advisory titled “Unlicensed Third Party Providers,” warning distributors not to allow their partners (meaning newspapers) to sell any liquor.
The ABC is concerned that those third-party providers (newspapers again) might be violating California law with “certain activities” and published a lengthy list of things not to do.
What does that mean in English? Break those laws and you’ll get busted. Just imagine what a perp walk of publishers would look like.
The California ABC never announced whether any newspaper company might have violated the state’s liquor laws. And the state liquor authorities have not charged any of them with anything.
Why?
“Because the advisory we sent out two years ago about third parties was so confusing,” Lori Ajax, deputy division chief of the ABC enforcement unit, told me.
One thing the California ABC made clear this time around: Newspapers, as third parties, will have their books audited to make sure the papers are not siphoning off money that should be going to their liquor-licensed partners.
One other thing: The other 49 states will be watching what California does. If the Golden State cracks down, everyone else will, too.
The California agency says the papers will only be allowed to collect “reasonable fees” from their wine clubs. What is a reasonable fee? “That’s a good question,” Ajax said. “We haven’t figured that out yet.”
But they will.
No state agency wants to bag a newspaper for bootlegging. So California is thinking about allowing Internet wine club sites to buy. That would make the papers legal bootleggers — or high-priced bartenders.
Meanwhile, the papers are still deciding how to handle the ethics questions arising from their wine-clubbing activities. They insist their wine and restaurant writers have nothing to do with their wine deals.
Yet they promote their wine sites as The Dallas Morning News Wine Club, or Los Angeles Times Wine Club, giving the distinct impression their reporters are the ones stomping on grapes.
Consider the case of The New York Times.
On Aug.13, 2009, Thomas K. Carley, senior vice president of The New York Times Co., announced that the Gray Lady was becoming a boozer. The venture is run independently of the Times’ food and wine editorial sections, “so there would be no conflict or appearance that our critics were selling,” Carley said in the press release.
The wines, Carley said, would be picked, packaged, and distributed by Global Wine Co., which by the way also picks wines for Williams-Sonoma, a Times advertiser.
Talking out of both sides of his press release, Carley added that excerpts from wine-related Times stories would run on the club’s website, and members would receive booklets of Times recipes meant to be paired with each shipment of wine.
Translation: Our wines are not lemons.
“Ms. Drinkwell,” the alter-ego and blog of a wine expert based in Berkeley, Calif., immediately ridiculed Carley’s attempt to justify the Times’ investment in the wine business.
“The New York Times Wine Club is not called the Global Wines Club for a reason,” Drinkwell wrote. “The wine club’s marketers want your thought process to go something like this: ‘Oh the Times has a wine club. I like their wine club. That Eric Asimov (Times wine critic) writes about some pretty cool wines, so I guess their club will be pretty good.’”
Two years later, the Times wine club page is reinforcing that perception. Its relationship with Global is buried in tiny, tiny, type at the bottom of the site. Meanwhile, on the right side of the page is a box that links to Diner’s Journal, where Asimov sometimes writes eloquently about wines and food for the Times.
On her blog, Drinkwell noted that linking the wine club to Asimov gives the strong impression that the wines the Times is pushing are as good as the ones he is reviewing.
That perception is one shared by Darrell Corti, president of Corti Brothers, a famed Sacramento grocery, and an internationally known expert on wines and wineries.
“If Eric Asimov recommends a wine, that wine is going to sell,” Corti said. “The person who picks the wine for the club has to have great credibility. Sometimes someone who was great once uses his reputation to promote something that might not be as good.”
Tom Negrete, managing editor of The Sacramento Bee, agrees.
“The wine clubs, because they want to get a good price, will order and pay for their wines in advance,” said Negrete, who thought about starting a wine club two years ago but abandoned the idea when his advertisers complained. “So they might pick a wine that was great last year, but those wines may not be as good this year.”
Here is another problem: Newsrooms control their copy. They stand behind the work of their reporters, backing them with lawyers, if necessary.
The newsrooms and the wine writers don’t vet the wine tasters. They can’t, because it would seem like they are part of the newspaper club’s wine-tasting team. So striving to be ethical creates another ethics problem.
The Chicago Tribune, which started its wine club last spring, seems to be dealing with that problem. The top of the page, in large type, promotes “Chicago Tribune wine.”
However, and I mean however, at the very, very bottom of its wine page in microscopic type is this caveat:
“While the Chicago Tribune Wine Club uses articles from the Chicago Tribune archives, the wines themselves are selected independently, not by Chicago Tribune wine critics or other members of the news department.”
Pardon my passion, but I like newspapers. They are still the most credible source of news in this country. Readers love them and hate them, but they need them. They want to be wooed with stories about their communities, not about wineries.
Allan Wolper, professor of journalism at Rutgers University, is the host of “Conversations with Allan Wolper,” a podcast on WBGO.org, an NPR affiliate in the New York area. He has won more than 50 journalism prizes. His ethics columns in E&P have been honored by The National Press Club and the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.