LA Weekly food critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Gold spoke about the ways new media are changing his profession at the Nov. 1 Journalism Director's Forum. The onset of "citizen critics" who use sites such as Yelp as their forum have changed the traditional food critic role. "The role of the individual critic is I'm not sure becoming less, I'm not sure becoming more, but it's becoming different," Gold said. "Instead of being the person whose opinion mattered, what you're sort of doing is leading the herd. It's being more of a shepherd than being an arbiter of taste." Mainstream restaurants are sometimes ignored now because Yelp users, who are not always the most affluent, are recognized for being the first person to review a restaurant and will seek out cheaper places off the beaten path. "It is interesting there are 10,000 people who think they can do your job," said Gold about the growing foodie culture. Gold, who has been a critic for 25 years, also addressed the difficulty of remaining anonymous in the digital age. Although he makes reservations using different names and phone numbers, people still know who he is. "Even before you had people tweeting your face as you eat your soup, the restaurateurs always knew who every major critic in every city is, they just do," said the former Gourmet magazine restaurant critic. He also uses social media as a way to connect with his fans by answering restaurant and food questions via Twitter and Facebook.