
Did a Rave Review Really Shut Down Portland Burger Bar Stanich’s? - moonka
https://www.wweek.com/news/2018/11/28/did-a-rave-review-really-shut-down-portland-burger-bar-stanichs-maybe-it-was-the-owners-legal-troubles/
======
danso
The essay being referenced was on HN's front a couple weeks ago (610 upvotes,
391 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469658)

Backgrounding -- and finding something problematic on someone who you've
profiled and liked is definitely one of the least fun things I've done as a
reporter. Regardless of the merit of the person's claims/denials, it must
genuinely suck to have talked to a reporter for what was initially intended to
be a positive recognition (e.g. "proud local owner of 'Best Burger Bar in
America'". Only to find out that your previously private legal problems --
i.e. known only to your personal network -- are going to be mentioned in the
mass media. Even if the mention is minimal -- i.e. doesn't change the main
focus of the story -- the subject of the story might wish they had never been
picked as a story idea.

That said, when you fail to mention a glaring problem at all -- well, it's not
the crime, it's the coverup. I would've understood if the original author had
found out about the legal problems and decided not to write a followup at all.
I can believe that he wasn't truly aware of how serious the burger bar owner's
legal history is, and didn't want to pry if it was the kind of crime that
didn't make normal headlines. But when you write a self-indulgent graf like
this --

> _And that fact is the thing I can’t quite get past. That a decision I made
> for a list I put on the internet has impacted a family business and forever
> altered its future. That I have changed family dynamics and relationships.
> And it could very easily happen again._

\-- you owe it to your readers to make sure that you've done a thorough
vetting. It's true that owner that owners of well-reviewed establishments are
thrown into a world of stress -- this has been true since the "golden age " of
newspapers and print critics. But for someone to have suddenly and
inexplicably shut down, it's also possible there's more to the story than what
the owner would like to publicly claim.

~~~
mewse-hn
The previous article seemed to be as objective as the reporter could make it,
describing his personal sense of guilt but also the people around him who
tried to convince him it wasn't entirely his fault.

He did allude to the family problems that the restaurant owner was going
through, and that they contributed to the failure of the restaurant. He
probably felt that airing those problems publicly would merely do more damage
to the business he felt responsible for damaging in the first place. This new
article says the original author didn't know about the legal entanglement so
that could have used vetting.

This all seems to be related but separate to the main question from the
original article: how responsible are food critics to the businesses they
write about? Even if the business would eventually fail on its own, is
accelerating the downfall an ethical wrong? This is the interesting part of
the conversation that should be examined with these articles

~~~
danso
It definitely was a set of unfortunate circumstances for the author. If he was
told about the messy divorce, it would have been standard procedure to get the
ex-wife's side of things, especially since she had been a manager at the bar
for nearly 2 decades. But I'm assuming she's dead, if she had stage 4 breast
cancer in 2014. And that might have led the author understandably to think
that "messy divorce", and drinking problems, was as problematic as it got.

I completely agree with you that the author still had a good point. I think
his article is particularly resonant today, with the growing fear and
resentment of social media oversharing, online harassment and doxxing, and
even data retention (e.g. "Right to be forgotten").

------
55555
> Stanich and his wife divorced, citing "irreconcilable differences," in 2016.
> He agreed to give her a family home in Tempe, Ariz., $400,000 in a lump sum
> and $8,000 a month in support payments—and custody of the family dog, Rambo.

a house, 400k, 8k every month, and the dog. Jesus.

~~~
throwaway5250
That's almost exactly my terms. In my case, not so much as a harsh word
between us--ex just decided she deserved it, and that's the way the law works.
My current gross doesn't even cover alimony. (And alimony isn't deductible
while you're unemployed, nor can you make qualified withdrawals from
retirement accounts to pay for it.)

Still pretty happy to be rid of her. Be careful out there...

~~~
ta3216
I don’t get it. Assuming she didn’t work, wouldn’t it be half your income
averaged over the past few years? Meaning, regardless of what she thinks she
deserves, isn’t there a standard calculation used, ie half?

~~~
oh_sigh
Three options:

1) OP is just straight up lying

2) OP basically just blindly signed whatever was put in front of him

3) OP doesn't have much income but has a large net worth and payments were
structured as monthly payments instead of a lump sum.

Edit: Please note I'm just listing possibilities. I'm not calling OP a liar,
just that it is possible he is lying. Or that he is sitting on millions in
investments.

~~~
throwaway5250
Sympathies. I might have written that myself ten years ago. Godspeed.

(Never hit a million, and falling fast these days.)

------
j_m_b
The Probation / Parole system, and the "correctional" institution in the US is
a national disaster. The idea to prevent an adult, an elderly adult at that,
from engaging in lawful activities like drinking alcohol as terms of probation
is ludicrous. This man's life spiraled out of control for one reason.. the
punitive nature of law enforcement and correctional institutions. What should
be regarded as a health condition and treated as such (alcoholism) is instead
used as a tool to further humiliate and demoralize this individual. It's not
even safe to cold-turkey quit alcohol for an alcoholic because of the
possibility of Grand Mal Seizures.

~~~
danso
His charge of reckless driving was in 2017. In 2014, he received probation
after pleading no contest to choking his terminally ill wife, whom in 2016 he
divorced. And then got a contempt-of-court charge for not meeting the terms of
the divorce settlement.

What does the probation/parole system have to do with his particular issues?

------
awakeasleep
Pretty gross to be airing this dirty laundry in a public article.

~~~
magic_beans
That dirty laundry is public record, unfortunately.

~~~
rootusrootus
A further reminder that just because something is technically public does not
make it necessarily okay to broadcast it. We have a real problem in our modern
world dealing with all the data out there and how it should be protected, or
not. Used to be it didn't matter much because you'd have to go down to the
courthouse to get detailed information. Now it's being data mined, collected,
aggregated with 100s of other sources, and sold. Yuck.

~~~
walrus01
Maybe there's a very good reason why crimes and our court systems are public?
Such as, so that people who choke their wife who is dying from cancer can be
avoided and shunned by moral, law abiding persons.

------
GJR
Clear case of Betteridge's Law:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

