Wilfrid

At my house, i feel like it's normally a free for all, which is fine.. i don't think anyone has ever gone without a drink.. However, at a restaurant, my biggest pet peeve, well, i have so many, but, the biggest one that comes to mind is that schmuck waiter who you know is purposely over filling your wine to sell you another bottle.. Same goes for the guy who does that with bottled water. I actually find the bottled water more obnoxious because, the waiter will fill everyones water  and then crack a bottle without asking and then you end the meal with a full bottle of water on the table.   Depending on my mood I say something though, i normally just deduct the bottle of water from his tip.  I assume he is a company man and would want it that way. 

 

Yes, there's that, and there's also the opposite--when your glasses are empty, the food is in front of you getting cold, and the bottle is on the far  side of the room being ignored by your server.

 

Like other aspects of restaurant service, there are several ways to do this badly.

It's all very well to swear off risky, long-term, expensive contracts, but I think Robbie can pretty much name his price.

If you're at dinner with a group of six at somebody's home somehow the wine gets poured.  It's not that hard.

If it's a large group at my home, I usually walk around the table pouring wine. (I'm serving the food anyway.) I'm not doing that in a restaurant.

In any case, passing the wine and topping glasses up at random is a relaxed business when (a) people brought the wine and/or (b) there's plenty of wine. It's different in a restaurant where your paying 3x the price, and you don't know if anyone is going to want to order another bottle.

Hitchens might as well complain about waiters interrupting him to serve food. What's the difference?

Broad distribution via the internet means that there's no reason number of journalists should go back to where it was, though.

I don't think the market will go back to "where it was," but the demand for digital content is on the upswing. I mean, in addition to websites, someone has to provide content for (most) apps, for example. Now maybe that's not straight journalism, and sure, a lot of people are being suckered into writing for free, but it's all part of the changing scene.

... a content farm model (is that Forbes? I couldn't read his babble)...

Only in a very reductive sense. But yes, it's an inelegant piece, only really worth it if the subject's important to you. I am sure I skimmed some of it.
 

Of course if the currently known models are failing it doesn't mean every model will fail, just that the size of that economy has shrunk considerably and it'll take substantial efforts to make it grow again.

Right. What's not right--and I'm not sure that anyone here was doing it--is saying that journalism is finished because the current model is failing, period. There's a lot of research and experimentation going on with respect to alternatives (other than subscription).