As a writer, and as a teacher of writing, I have always been sensitive toward ensuring the integrity of the magazine or newspaper article (or the blog post). The best-written — and obviously the most frequently read — article seeks to situate the subject of the piece in a deeper enduring epiphany. The wise writer always revisits the draft of the article to see where brush strokes are needed to settle that epiphany into its rightful place. Diction and syntax are, therefore, powerful operators in ensuring the integrity of the piece. Occasionally, the writer loses focus, relying upon overly effusive, rhapsodic language to praise justifiably the subject of the article but also to inadvertently diminish the significance of the underlying epiphany.

In other words, time for a teaching moment. And, what better example than a recent article from the San Francisco press highlighting, among other entrepreneurs, the work of Christopher Blue.

Chocolatier Blue is, as this blog’s editor has consistently noted, the most remarkable confectioner’s business to be encountered in the United States. (More about Blue is available at The Selective Echo here and here.) Several months ago, Blue and his wife took the business from Utah to San Francisco where it has played to expected rave reviews, such as this piece by John Birdsall of the East Bay Express.

The money quote:

“Blue is from Nebraska, too, where he spent summers on his family’s farm. If his chocolates have urban polish, it’s because he learned his chops in Chicago, at the blisteringly expensive Charlie Trotter’s, a restaurant that stands as a temple of vertical food and foamy emulsions. While other fancy chocolate makers aren’t shy about using frozen fruit purées and concentrates for fillings, Blue does it all form scratch: presses Granny Smiths for juice he then reduces, till its jelly-like, to mix with ganache for his cider chocolates. And he uses the sous-vide method — poaching shrink-wrapped fresh fruits slowly, in water barely above warm, as a way of preserving flavor.

“For the holidays, Blue is making jelly candies from his fresh-fruit purées, five pieces packaged together for just two bucks — a certain high-end Ferry Building chocolatier is charging $18 for a box of 24 fruit gelées. “There’s extraordinary price-gouging out there,” Blue says. “It’s out of control.” The young entrepreneur thinks sustainability should mean, in part, that customers can afford to sustain a local business by becoming regular buyers, not just coughing up cash for the occasional splurge. “I’m hoping people can’t charge $2 for a piece of fruit jelly again. I want to at least give people quantity and quality for their money.”

Earlier in the piece, Birdsall wrote of Blue and the others featured:

“The three maverick-y entrepreneurs are steeped in the small-scale and the personal. Call them idealistic, call them naive, call them, well, green in multiple senses of the word. But stuff a stocking with what they’re selling this season, and you’ll buy into a shift about holiday entertaining so dramatic it’ll make the spray-paint-and-anodized-aluminum holidays of Christmas past seem impossibly distant.”

Could Birdsall unintentionally have discounted the driving emphasis behind such resourceful entrepreneurs? The piece certainly strikes a positive vein for Blue and the others featured. But, then, I was certainly taken by Matt Caputo’s comments when he mentioned the article to me. Caputo, who is the marketing director for Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli and whose store features a gorgeous display of Blue’s always-fast selling chocolates, suggested that it seemed a bit perplexing and confusing about the article’s take-away value. It’s a noteworthy point. As a teacher, I would have advised more workshopping for Birdsall’s piece. The article’s themes are couched in conflicting signals.

What Blue is doing — and what many are accomplishing likewise in various aspects of the Slow Food Movement — extends far beyond the perceptions of indulgences, elitism, and dream-like ideals. Of course, the picture is far more complex. Blue impresses me — as reflected in the bold-faced quote above — because he sees the movement as being broader and more diverse than perhaps some of the more celebrated purveyors of the Slow Food ideals envision it. At some point, I think it will become far more useful when some of the Slow Food leaders begin to leverage and exercise political, social, and financial capital in opening the doors and generating resources to groups that otherwise might be unable to do so.

From a professional public relations perspective, I see serious shortcomings in the messaging and positioning of the Slow Food Movement and this is certainly reflected in the media coverage because writers themselves have yet to comprehend the broader and deeper perspectives associated with the ideals of food sustainability. The question becomes how does “good, clean, and fair” food reach everybody and not just the three to four percent of current market share.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, makes the following point consistently whenever he participates in a panel about the Slow Food Movement: Millions who work at vegetable farms, meatpacking plants, and restaurants — easily comprising the largest group of employees in this country — have been frequently compromised and exploited and, just as celebrated chefs, restaurant owners and authors, they need to be allowed equally meaningful roles in the sustainable-food movement. Perhaps then, writers such as Birdsall and others will start from a clearer epiphany steering well clear of the elitist, indulgent aspects that somehow are using up the most precious oxygen in the forum of what it means to have a genuinely sustainable food economy.