Dowd on Beer

I must confess until a week or so ago I’d never heard of William M. Dowd and his Dowd on Drinks column. He’s got ten blogs — seven of which have something to do with alcohol — under a business umbrella he calls Circle 7 Associates. Based on his resume it appears most of his writing is about wine and spirits, which may explain why I’m not familiar with him. His writing is apparently very widely distributed by both the New York Times News Service and the Hearst News Service. His website lists dozens of newspapers and websites that carry his work. But one of his blogs is “Dowd’s Brews Notebook” and purports to cover beer. And here’s where I think his knowledge is on thinner ice.

The last time I mentioned Dowd was when he wrote that “startled gasps” would occur to being told James Bond might actually drink beer. He was one of the legion of media duped by Heineken (and the film company) that Bond drank beer in Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, and only in that novel. Both claims were not true but no one in the press questioned the propaganda.

In his latest missive, on the very same day it was published, Dowd took the ABC story about Miller’s new chocolate beer and re-worked it, using some of the same phrases and not attributing the original story. I don’t wish to suggest it rises to the level of plagiarism, because it doesn’t. Rather Dowd appears to have taken the ABC story and re-wrote a smaller part of it using some of the same quotes and using some of the same specific language in his piece, all without ever mentioning the original story. Maybe that’s okay legally, since it’s certainly different enough but is seems to me a little unseemly at best.

For example, here’s his first sentence. “Fans of unusually flavored beers are largely limited to small craft products.” The ABC story was the first time I’d ever heard craft beer described or defined as “unusually flavored” and it was this phrase that first put me on the trail of Dowd’s story origin. The original press release Miller released the previous day has none of the language in the ABC piece. Dowd then goes on to describe Miller’s chocolate beer and mentions Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob Honey Lager and Michelob Amber Bock as competing beers. These are the same beers also mentioned in the ABC story, though it would have made more sense to compare A-B’s new chocolate and vanilla-flavored beers, which I sampled at the A-B event in Denver at the end of last month. But Dowd appears to have only one source for this story, and it didn’t talk about those beers.

To be fair, there are original bits in his piece when he mentions Miller’s medal for this beer last year and at the end, when Dowd does acknowledge that Miller didn’t invent chocolate beer, listing Samuel Adam Chocolate Bock and Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout as earlier chocolate beers.

But I think the larger problem here is another drinks writer who appears quite fluent with wine and spirits trying to write about something he is not quite as expert on as his main oeuvre. A quick glance at his recent beer musings reveal he’s writing about many of the top stories and has some generally decent content, but it all seems somewhat rehashed. Now I realize I’m always complaining that wine writers don’t write about beer so perhaps I shouldn’t be complaining here. And I am glad he is writing about beer since, unlike most beer writers, he appears to have access to the mainstream press. But in the last two pieces I noticed by Dowd, he’s regurgitated two beer stories and added little to the stories. And he appears to be selling himself as an expert on beer when he describes himself as a “veteran newspaper journalist and editor as well as a competition judge and writer in the fields of food, restaurants and alcoholic beverages.” And while he may be doing a better job than many wine and food writers, he’s still got a long way to go before we “fans of unusually flavored beers” can consider him an expert on beer.