Using regular people as critics is integral to the show’s success, says executive producer David Manilow, because viewers can “see who these people are and relate to them—or not.” And now the show’s reach will become greater: Last November,Check Please! launched a website (checkplease.tv) that by mid-2008 will allow users to upload their own video restaurant reviews.

Why are opinionated Chicagoans taking to the Web? For some, writing online provides a way to share obscure views. “There are a lot of opinions and perspectives that aren’t represented in traditional mainstream media,” says Andrew Huff, editor and publisher of Gapers Block (gapersblock.com), a widely read Chicago blog that covers food, music and local news. “[Blogging is] very low cost, and that allows a wider range of voices to be heard.”

Others give positive publicity to the places they enjoy. “I want to be able to contribute to a business [I support] and bring more people back,” says Erin Schmid, an executive assistant with a financial services firm who’s written more than 190 reviews of everything from bars to colonic centers on Yelp.com, a site that promotes itself with the tagline “Real People. Real Reviews.” It’s a sentiment shared by Kirstie Shanley, a writer and photographer with Radio Free Chicago (radiofreechicago.org), a local music blog. “I really wanted these bands to have more of an audience,” she says.

But according to Matt Rucins, who books shows at live-music venue Schubas, bloggers who cheerlead for bands can sometimes create an echo-chamber effect that gives a short-term boost to a band’s notoriety, but doesn’t always mean long-term ticket sales. “[Bloggers] are pushing what they like, and I think they feel like they’re doing the band a favor,” he says. “I think a lot of clubs might have gotten hurt [by this]. More than once over the past year, there have been bands that have been riding ‘basement critic’ buzz that just didn’t translate into anything.”

Whether singing a band’s praises or dressing down a disappointing album, when it comes to music criticism, Jim DeRogatis, pop-music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, says the influence of word-of-mouth critiques isn’t new. “The online webzine world is just the fanzine world in a different format,” he says. “Rock fans have always shared their opinions, and the Web has just made that easier.”

Media critics have noted that the influence of the populist critic is increasing at a time when, due to cost-cutting measures, print publications contain less expert criticism, leading some to worry the level of discourse will suffer.

“There’s a spectrum between reviewing and criticism,” explains Northwestern University journalism professor Abe Peck. “Reviewing can be very smart, but part of reviewing is a service function: ‘Should I spend $10 [on a ticket]?’ Criticism can also tell you that, but criticism’s a little deeper. It tries to place whatever’s being looked at in more of a context.” In other words, anyone can say a movie kicks ass, but not everyone has the skills to say whether another director kicked that same ass years ago, and kicked it better.

So how do you tell the difference between an uninformed review and criticism that comes from a wealth of knowledge about the subject? As both types of critiques increase on the Web, it’s getting harder to suss out the professional from the amateur critic, and even harder to determine whom you can trust. What’s more, bloggers are now afforded similar access as members of the traditional media in the form of press passes for live shows, advance copies of books and CDs, and invites to media-only events. And with bloggers able to publish instantaneously, the first widely disseminated opinion about a new work may not always come from a professional critic.

Also confounding matters is the democratic way information is presented on the Web, where amateur opinions are placed alongside those of professional critics. “We’ve never had access to more information and it gets bundled,” Peck notes, referring to aggregator sites that publish amateur movie reviews alongside professional ones.

But just because those reviews look like criticism, doesn’t mean they are, says Steve Prokopy, a graduate of Northwestern’s journalism program, and a movie reviewer for Gapers Block as well as the Chicago editor for movie-review site Ain’t It Cool News (aintitcool.com). “People think that because they can form a sentence and have an opinion, that means, ‘Well, I can write about whatever I want,’_” he says. “And they certainly can, but it doesn’t mean that people are going to revere them or trust them.”

On the other hand, Prokopy says professional critics in Chicago and elsewhere alienate their readers by burying them in film-school blather. “There are certainly some [film] critics who maybe would make better film historians,” he explains. “As much as [a reader] likes getting a little history lesson, what it really boils down to is: Is this [a film] that I want to see?”

For Yelp enthusiast Schmid, it’s the general lack of professional training that makes her value the bloggers’ viewpoint. “If the average joe comes in off the street and doesn’t know the first thing about working in a restaurant, their experience is still valid,” she says, explaining that someone who doesn’t know the industry still can say what makes a dining experience satisfying for the average consumer.

Some sites use technology to help readers decide who is trustworthy. Yelp requires users to create profiles and encourages people to use their real names and photos. This is meant to establish accountability for the reviews they write and to create a built-in bullshit detector.

“Some places will have their minions out there,” says Schmid, referring to the practice of restaurant owners recruiting friends to write positive reviews of their businesses. “If they have one review and zero [friends listed on their profile], I don’t really put much stock in that review.”

Chicago-focused blog Chicagoist.com also now requires users to create a profile, which tracks their posts, before they’re allowed to comment on the site. In a post explaining the change, associate editor Jim Kopeny said the site wanted to “produce more meaningful comments” and “foster a sense of community” among its readership.

“It seems as if they take more responsibility for what they’re saying [when a profile is required], and [the comments] tend to be less ‘you suck’ and more ‘you suck, and here’s my reasoning for saying that,’” he says. Being able to see a person’s online identity also helps create the same kind of trust that Manilow ascribes to Check Please!’s reviews. “It just adds more credibility and authenticity if I can see the person,” Manilow explains.

In the end, identifying with a critic—amateur or professional—may not be as important as doing the research to ensure what that critic writes is even worth reading. “I look for their reviews on music that I’m familiar with,” says Huff from Gapers Block. “That’ll give me a better idea whether I’ll agree with their opinions later on.”

Regardless of whether they agree with bloggers’ opinions, many of Chicago’s professional critics see the Internet as an opportunity for better criticism, not worse. “Good writing is good writing,” DeRogatis explains. “The mode of delivery changes but the content, the substance, doesn’t change.”