(The dude who hired Susan Stapleton)Eater Las Vegas has gone from bad to worse. Leaving us to believe that Susan Stapleton — the absentee hack who runs it — must have some magical powers over her bosses at Vox Media to keep her position. Stapleton literally phones in her “coverage” of the Las Vegas restaurant scene, as you’ll read below.
Our theories are many as to how SS keeps her job, but they’ve centered on several distinct possibilities:
> Stapleton works cheap.
> Stapleton has pictures of Vox Media Editorial Director Lockhart Steele ( pictured above) fondling her. (A revolting proposition admittedly, but hey, it could happen.)
> Stapleton has pictures of the Vox Media CEO having sex with a goat.
> Stapleton is drinking buddies with the person who pays her $14.11 a week to post her worthless tripe about Las Vegas restaurants.
Stapleton has convinced her editors that the Las Vegas food scene is so paltry, so unsophisticated, and so bereft of talent (both in the kitchen and at the keyboard) that even an out-of-town, know-nothing, booze-hound can report on it.
(Did Susan catch them in flagrante goat-lecto?)
The only way Eater Vegas would get better would be if there was a concerted effort by chefs, diners, foodies, p.r. types and other assorted interested parties (i.e. people who actually live here) to write to Vox and complain about the terrible job their absentee writer is doing, and what a disservice to our community she is.
(The complaints would start and end with the fact that Stapleton lives in fucking Iowa fer chrissakes and “blogs” about Las Vegas by just re-printing press releases and calling it “content”. They might also include the fact that “Bradley Martin” does not exist, and was invented by Stapleton to make it appear as if she had a staff. How insanely fraudulent and childish is that?)
She wrangled the job 8 years ago and they seem content to pay her a nickel a word and keep the world’s shittiest restaurant blog alive….while thumbing their fat, stupid noses at our community.
These complaints will never happen, of course, because all the big hotels LOVE whatever publicity even a crap website like Eater Vegas provides….and the little, local joints need the exposure. So even if Stapleton is worthless, they’re all afraid of her famous vindictiveness (She loves to write whiny/bitchy letters to anyone who criticizes her or the web site, or threaten them, or block people, or worse.)
Under these circumstances, the very existence of Eater in Las Vegas is a slap in the face to our entire food scene. A number of people have tried to get the gig (remember: Stapleton announced her “retirement” a few years ago), but Vox let her keep the job even after she left town.
It’s all quite pathetic….and a testament to how the internet has pretty much ruined food writing, and how little Vox thinks of food writing.
Don’t believe me? Try this piece of word-smithing on for size:
The steakhouses of Las Vegas have a new rival with the opening of Bavette’s Steakhouse & Bar at the Monte Carlo. Chicago restaurant group Hogsalt dances onto the scene with this classic with a French flair take on a traditional steakhouse.
Customers can find chilled seafood towers, a peppered duck and goat cheese terrine, and crab cakes to start. The restaurant serves a double-bone Berkshire pork chop, lamb chops and spiced fried chicken.
But the real stars of the show? The steaks. Bavette’s uses USDA Prime with its Chicago cut classic rib-eye steak and dry-aged bone-in New York strip steak aged for 42 days. Vegetarians can order from their own special menu.
One must usually go to a children’s menu (or a ninth grade writing class) to find prose so scintillating.
For the record, yours truly has nothing against Eater National, and even enjoys reading the Eater blogs in other communities. But what is going on here (that has been going on for years now) is beyond the pale. (For those of you who don’t understand our outrage, look at it this way: Imagine a political columnist covering your city who lives four states away, or a sports writer with a nationally-sponsored Dallas Cowboys blog who never sets foot in Texas.)
The solution is simple: hire someone local who knows and cares about the Vegas restaurant scene — not a washed up cow who’s milking the gig. But until that happens….
The very existence of Eater Las Vegas is a continuing insult to our food community.
A pox on you, Vox.
And shame on you, Susan Stapleton. You don’t live here. You don’t work here. You don’t eat here. And you know nothing about what’s really going on in our restaurants. All you do is read this blog, press releases, my social media feeds, and few other outlets, and then aggregate/plagiarize articles into something that feeds your corporate master. You are a sorry excuse for a writer and you know it. You’ve embarrassed my city long enough.
And while I’m at it: Fuck you, Lockhart Steele. Payback’s a bitch, and her stripper name is Karma.
This post is below human dignity and should be withdrawn.
ELV responds: This post may be beneath human dignity, as Dan Svatass says, but it is not untrue. ELV apologizes for the profanity, but not for reasoning and emotions behind it.
Yeah, here’s the thing, I’m not going to dispute any of your criticisms against Eater Vegas, although I remain unconvinced about the bit about the goats, but I still visit the site occasionally. While I find their reviews to be vacuous at best, they still let me know about some restaurant openings I might not have heard of, and can fairly reliably inform me as to what sort of vibe/cuisine the owners/chefs are going for, and that’s of some value.
Of course, if *other* sources of worthwhile restaurant information become unavailable to me (cough), I may feel compelled to go to that site more often. That’s right ELV, if you stop blogging it will increase the reach and influence of the folks at Eater Vegas. I’m not above goading you into continuing to review new restaurants.
… also, I’ll add that I that in other venues Vox Media does some pretty good work, IMHO.
It’s super frustrating to read anything on that site. Most of their “lists” are so primarily focused on the Strip and celebrity/high end chain restaurants that the whole site reads more like a primer for ignorant tourists than it does a blog for locals wanting more info about our food scene. What original “content” there is are the often reposted but seldomly updated lists and the weekly VEGAS PRIMER that I swear has been the same piece for the last 6 months. Not to mention the calls for new writers (I wasn’t even graced with a “thanks but no thanks” response, and I assume they actually don’t want new writers) and the regular TIP YOUR EATER plea. If they had even just couple local writers, they would overflowing with substantial story leads beyond just reposting PR emails or whatever the RJ or Sun print out. It’s a shame, the Eater subsites for other cities with less of a wild and varied and generous food scene are decent and interesting. Ours could be great, or at least readable on the regular, but there’s no money in that I guess.
Honestly someone covering the Dallas Cowboys never going to Texas could do a decent job. There are games to watch, and study. There’s news to analyze, sources to contact. It would be better if they attended games, or practice, but it could still be good.
But you pretty much have to eat the food to have anything worthwhile to say about restaurants.
I don’t understand why they don’t fire her and just start reproducing the press releases under the Bradley Martin name to save the five cents a word.