The Washington Post’s blog Focus on Fairfax posted this important news story today: “Damon’s Rib Restaurant Opens at GMU; First on a College Campus.”
Students at George Mason University this week become the first in the nation to enjoy the famous ribs, onion loaves and big-screen entertainment served up by a Damon’s Grill located on a college campus.
Owned and operated by Sodexho USA, the university’s campus dining partner, the 150-seat, sports-themed restaurant features the chain’s signature Clubhouse equipped with two giant video screens and 11 42-inch plasma televisions for sports, network programming and interactive entertainment. Portable tabletop speakers complete the Clubhouse entertainment experience. For students, staff and campus visitors on the go, the restaurant features an “express” quick-service dining area and a curbside delivery service. There also is a full bar.
And it continues for seven more paragraphs.
How is this news exactly? Did the Post do any of this reporting, or is this just a direct quotation of the entire press release?
I realize Damon’s PR firm makes this sound important, but in reality, it’s just another chain restaurant in Fairfax. (The noteworthiness comes from it being “the first full-service, branded casual dining restaurant to open at a U.S. university.” While that may technically be true, the distinction is based on a lot of technicalities. I’ve seen casual dining restaurants at many colleges, including chains.)
I would expect Post reporters to recognize that a new chain restaurant in Fairfax isn’t particularly newsworthy, even if it’s on a college campus.
2 comments ↓
George Mason’s public, right?
In that case, the news here, though weak, is that the private company opened on a public campus. This is big stuff on many college campuses nationwide.
A recurring theme at public universities, I’ve anecdotally observed, is that the ultra-liberal/communist/socialist students (who tend to be the loudest) fervently fight privatization on campus.
Try getting a McDonald’s on the campus of UMass. The aforementioned students will cry and yell, and the administration concedes to them.
However, I agree that the Post may have more effectively edited that information into a much-less prominent version of that report.
This isn’t really a big deal, its ran by sodexho the evil company that manages the food at a lot of colleges and even more prisons.
The college I attended had the same deal, sodexho gets an exclusive deal with the college, but their food is so bad they make deals to bring in franchises and run them.
The franchises resturants are no where as nice as the real ones ran by the actual company or independant franchise owners.
At my school we had an sbarro and a starbucks ran by sodexho, they were pretty horrible.
Sodexho charges a premium on top of the inflated food prices due to their monopoly and justify it by claiming they have to pay the university for the space.
This justification would make sense if businesses everywhere didn’t have to rent their space.
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