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Gourmet Magazine, the beloved 68 year old grande dame of culinaria, died on October 5, 2009. And the obits say I killed her.
Jennie Yabroff's autopsy in Newsweek blames Gourmet's elitism and people like me. To make her point, she quotes a story from the July issue of Gourmet by Alexander Lobrano: "[A]fter a stately pause, the graying waiter returned with a heavy copper casserole, which he set at my end of the table. Lifting the lid, he released a fleeting cloud of steam. The mingled aroma of wine, beef, and onions was so intoxicating it seemed an eternity before everyone had been served and I could dig in." Yabroff thinks this is a bit highfalutin, saying "Lobrano's story evokes life the way we want it to be; the way it is maybe once or twice in a lifetime," and she wonders if people like me, who write about food on the net, are to blame: "Perhaps the rise of food blogs means we're hungry for writing about food the way we actually prepare and eat it, crumpled paper napkins and all."
But Gourmet wasn't elitist even though it's name sounds snobby. It just took its subtitle, "The Magazine of Good Living", seriously. It told fascinating stories, used the best ingredients and proper cooking techniques to create memorable dishes, and photographed them lovingly. It also covered food politics intelligently, dining vividly, drink easily, culinary travel and culture thoughtfully. It covered street food and simple dishes as well as fantasy food. Subscribers kept every issue. It was not fussified. It just wasn't aimed at people who eat at McDonald's regularly or those who make macaroni and cheese from a box every week.
Chuck Townsend, CEO of Conde Nast, the owner of both Gourmet and Bon Appetit, is the one who took Gourmet to the slaughterhouse. He blamed the recession in his announcement to staff on October 5, 2009: "[I]n this economic climate it is important to narrow our focus to titles with the greatest prospects for long-term growth." Mediaweek translates: "Gourmet was the more luxury-oriented than sibling Bon Appetit, which made it an ill fit for today's budget-crunched times. Instead, those titles thriving in the space are new, celebrity-focused entries with mass appeal, like Hearst's Food Network Magazine and Reader's Digest Association's Every Day with Rachael Ray."
To make matters worse, printing and postage are usually the biggest expense items on a magazine's income statement, usually bigger even than payroll, and they have been rising like bread dough for decades.
But Gourmet's goose was cooked when 2009 ad sales shrank 43%.
Online advertising systems such as Google's AdWords had been draining Gourmet's blood. AdWords, and similar systems at Yahoo! and Microsoft Bing, allow advertisers to place their ads precisely where they need to be. No sense for mail-order steak catalogs to advertise on a page with a salad recipe. Plenty of sense for them to be on my beef recipe pages. Serving appropriate ads to people is the thing Google does best. Better even than search.
If you search Google for "steak recipes", you will probably see ads from the mail order steak companies in the right hand column. And maybe not. It changes from from day to day, and hour to hour. I just did the search and there was an ad from Dominick's, a Chicago-based grocery chain. Google knows where I live! It can tell by tracing the location of the company that supplies my internet access. AdWords buyers can get up-to-the-minute stats on exactly how many people saw their ad, clicked on it, and bought from it. No way a magazine or any other marketing medium can top that. Just another example of how the internet has ground up century old business models as if they were black pepper. Look at what it has done to newspapers, the US Postal Service, real estate sales, and travel agencies, to name a few.
Gourmet had other revenue streams and Conde Nast says it will keep the brand alive in them. It published cookbooks, and just this year put out Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen. If you buy it the book says you will get a free subscription to Gourmet. Oops! Don't wait for the sequel.
Gourmet produced an excellent television series for PBS, Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, and has another Gourmet's Adventures with Ruth debuting in October 17, but that's not going to feed many employees. Classes and festivals? Sounds like fun, but shouldn't all these spinoffs be under Bon Appetit's brand, the name they have to build?
If the internet played a role in Gourmet's demise, then some of the blame can be found in the mirror, Mr. Townsend. Gourmet's website was free and had many of the magazine articles as well as videos and user feedback. Not only that, most of Gourmet's recipes can be found alongside recipes from Bon Appetit in Epicurious.com, a wonderful free database run by Conde Nast. So why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
According to the publishing trade mag, Folio, print periodicals have been crumbling at a record pace in recent years, far outstripping startups. The score is 383 to 259 so far in 2009. Among the recently interred were the reincarnation of Life, PC Magazine, Vibe, Men's Vogue, Cosmo Girl, Town & Country Travel, Portfolio, and Modern Bride. Makes one wonder how long before Bon Appétit, Cook's Illustrated, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Food & Wine, Food Network Magazine, Saveur, and the other epicurean mags hit their expiration dates.
Some observers suspected that Conde Nast would try to blend their two food titles, but most expected Bon Appetit would get folded into the older, more stately Gourmet, whose Editor-in-Chief was the powerful and talented Ruth Reichl. But Bon Appetit, with the less prominent Barbara Fairchild at the helm, had the larger circulation (1.3 million vs. 950,000), its readers have slightly higher household income ($82,000 vs. $80,000), and more advertising, so it was a no-brainer from the financial standpoint.
Subscribers have been asking why Conde Nast did not sell the magazine. No doubt Townsend compared the two subscriber lists and saw minimal duplication. So they have automatically transferred all Gourmet subscribers to Bon Appetit. By merging them they found a way to significantly increase Bon Appetit's subscriber base with little expense.
Although it varies per magazine, new subscriber acquisition usually costs $20-40 per, making the first year of a subscription a wash. Renewal efforts can cost as little as $5 average, including efforts to retain dropouts. No doubt many Gourmet subscribers will dump Bon Appetit when their renewal bill comes, but many will stay on. Bon Appetit, which was founded in 1956, is a very good rag and I'm betting a majority will renew.
Bon Appetit could come close to increasing its circulation by half, and get there at a much lower cost than the usual way of beating the bushes for new subs, which is buying mailing lists and sending expensive snail mailing sales pitches.
In his eulogy in the New York Times, a grieving Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated magazine examines the body of his competitor and fingers another suspect: You. You and your 3x5" cards and your keyboard and your desire to see your name online. "The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up." Kimball's excellent magazine, it must be noted, has no advertising, and is sustained solely by subscriptions. Ditto for its website.
He then spreads the blame to the advertising business model prevalent on the net and argues for the subscription model his site uses. "[We need to] define our brands, prove our worth, ask to be paid for what we do, and refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools, the one where everyone has an equal voice. Google 'broccoli casserole' and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise -- the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks."
So I Googled "broccoli casserole" and the very first recipe was in cooks.com (not related to Cook's Illustrated). Cooks.com is a humongous recipe database and it had 395 (!) broccoli casserole recipes contributed by, well, You. The very first recipe, by someone identified only as "CM" called for "sliced chicken" to be placed in the bottom of the casserole and the rest of the ingredients go on top. Then it said "brown on the top third shelf in a 350F oven for about 15 minutes or until nicely golden." It doesn't say if I'm to use bake or broil, but I'm here to tell you, if you use raw chicken, 15 minutes on either setting is not likely enough time to kill salmonella, rampant in raw chicken nowadays. You could be more than "disappointed" in the first recipe you find, as Kimball predicts. You could be serving everyone a nice case of food poisoning.
I randomly clicked on some of the other recipes. A few looked like they might be pretty good. But many had confusing ingredients lists, failing to specify what kind of cheese, and many others called for Velveeta or Cheez Whiz, officially classified as "pasteurized process cheese" that tastes more like plastic than real cheese. Other recipes had sketchy instructions. None appeared to be written by a pro, although a few did look to be cribbed from cookbooks and, perhaps, even Gourmet.
Looking closer at the search results for "broccoli casserole" from Google, I noticed that the 122nd listing was a link to a recipe in Conde Nast's Epicurious.com by someone named "hayesmd", an anonymous civilian, not even a recipe from Gourmet or Bon Appetit! I also checked out the recipe on CooksIllustrated.com. A polished recipe with precise instructions. Looks killer.
The latest thing is "crowd sourced" recipe sites like Foodista.com and the recipes section of Wikia.com. Anyone can edit any recipe they want. The theory is that the wisdom of the crowd will produce something better than any individual can. It works fairly well on Wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia. So, if I hate cilantro, I can whip through the site removing cilantro willy nilly. If I like spicy food, I can add a splash of hot sauce to everything. It I work for Velveeta, well, you get the picture. These are new sites, so only time will tell if they produce anything useful, but I am skeptical.
Real recipe writing is hard work and it takes experience. It can take a dozen attempts to get it right. Adjust one ingredient and you probably have to adjust others. After you get it down you have to explain each step so there is no ambiguity. A serious food writer lives in fear of ruining somebody's meal with an imprecise instruction. I've been working on my recipe for the ultimate hamburger on and off for months and I still haven't published it.
I had to wonder, where in Google are the recipes from chefs or experienced foodies who slave over first rate websites for few returns? Where are the links to Brigit Binns (RoadFoodie.com), Michael Chu (CookingForEngineers.com), Steve Dublanica (WaiterRant.net), Ree Drummond (ThePioneerWoman.com), Clotilde Dusoulier (ChocolateAndZucchini.com), Robin Garr (WineLoversPage.com), Jaden Hair (SteamyKitchen.com), David Leite (LeitesCulinaria.com), Nancy Loseke and Tj Robinson (TheOliveOilSecret.com), Harold McGee (CuriousCook.com), Natalie MacLean (NatalieMacLean.com), Michael Ruhlman (Ruhlman.com), Maria Rodale (HuffingtonPost.com/Maria-Rodale), David Rosengarten (RosengartenChews.tumblr.com), or Jeff Varasano (Slice.SeriousEats.com/jvpizza)? Perhaps these sites don't have broccoli casserole recipes, and that's why they weren't on the Google list.
But all too often their work is buried waaaaaay down the results list of the big search engines. Trying to find the best websites on food is like going into the library for a cookbook and finding all the books are on the floor in a pile. Clearly Google and gang have a lot of work to do. At least when it comes to food, they are bringing us quantity, not quality.
Did websites like these contribute to Gourmet's passing, as Newsweek accuses? Perhaps, but considering how hard it is to find quality food info in Google, it is doubtful that we were major factors.
So who killed Gourmet? A thorough post-mortem shows that, like Juius Caesar, Gourmet was surrounded and knifed from all sides. Clearly Brutus was Conde Nast, but conspirators were numerous: The recession, advertisers, Google AdWords, Google Search, Bon Appetit, Epicurious.com, printers, the US Postal Service, perceived elitism, websites like mine, and You.
What does the future hold? While I am mourning the passing of a great magazine, I will continue to devour Cook's Illustrated and Bon Appetit. But I won't be buying two-year subscriptions for Christmas gifts. I hope they make me eat my words.
Until Google Search gets its act together, here's my list of some of my favorite food and drink websites. Tell me about yours.
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Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn runs the popular barbecue website AmazingRibs.com. He has been a magazine publisher, and hundreds of his articles on food, drink, and travel have appeared in the Chicago Tribune and Washington Post. Unless otherwise noted, all text is Copyright (c) 2009 By Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn, and all rights are reserved. Recommendations are all products, services, and websites he truly admires, and are never paid endorsements. Click here for information on reprint rights.
Follow Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ribguy
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I'm three-quarters the way through and I have not dog-eared one recipe. Flip, Flip, Flip. I'm done. That's it. It is clear to me now. I made fun of it. I turned my nose at how they turn their nose, all their fancy designer clothes and whimsical vacations to lovely cooking schools in obscure small towns on the outskirts of Tuscany or Mendoza. But, last Friday night, after the company Xmas bowling party, I whipped out my menu list and drove to the closeby international farmers market where I relished the seclusion of Friday night at 8pm, the isles clear, the eastern european deli almost closed (yes, I made it) and purchased my Romanian pickles, Slovenian farmer's cheese, fresh clams, fresh yucca, Chorizo (house made) and a $14.99 sashimi dinner (georgous!) with discounted $2.50 Korean radish/somthing roll (for dinner since I was too tired to cook after bowling) and had a better time- times ten -than bowling with open bar. Yes, perhaps it is time to admit that I .... am... a ... food ...snobby.
So, the Bon Appetit thing just ain't gonna happen. Nope. Kraft smaft. Saveur, Food and Wine? There's got to be somthing else. I dread the remaining months of my subscription. It's just gonna piss me off all over again.
now I know where to take her - to the Iberian Pig in Decatur! Awesome - this is working for me now. I lived in Spain and never tasted real Iberian ham. Pathetic, and more proof I am not a food snob. Oooh I can't wait to go there! But then, next section is artificial crab Cioppino! Oh, this is HARD. Last Xmas when she came, I made..... Cioppino..
Bon Appetit arrived in plastic today. What's the point of plastic? Who's gonna open a magazine with that grotesque photo of a meatball with cheap pasta? I did. I've got to see if this relationship will work. Then, smack! Double page spread of orange colored cheese nachos....
I went to cooking school and although I work full time, I cook regularly for my family and indulge in more complex recipes on the weekends. I have never enjoyed Gourmet as much as Bon Appetite or Saveur. It did seem to be pretentious and snobby to me and the recipes did not reflect my life or food interests.
Currently I subscribe to Saveur and read it cover to cover. I also take photographs and Saveur seems to delve into the the cultures and history of the food it features more than the other cooking magazines with superb photos that really show how the food integrates into the everyday life and culture.
I also subscribe to Cooking Light, although I find it to be more of a health and home magazine than a 'foodie' magazine. But I do adapt recipes from there during the week when my cooking time is short. I also search around for local 'foodie' newsletters and indy food 'zines to buy- especially if we are going to travel to another part of the country with a cool local food scene.
I like Bon Appetite, but only buy it around the holidays or if an issue looks particularly interesting to me. I can't recall the last time I was intrigued enough to pick up an issue of Gourmet and buy it. It just seemed like someone's wealthy grandma's cooking magazine to me.
I'm sorry, Mr. Kimball, but Gourmet was killed by its editors! I am a Cordon Bleu graduate cook and have lived and traveled on five continents so Gourmet should have been like catnip to me but it turned into something else indeed. In days of old, this was a go-to mag with great articles and recipes but that sure did change in the last few years. There are extremely obscure recipes with even more obscure ingredients, most not found on average market shelves. The magazine also failed to keep up with Americans who had less time and even less inclination to slave over one recipe for two days only to have it wolfed down by eaters who didn't appreciate it. I don't care one whit what a Korean chef does in his spare time or how he cooks over a wood fire he makes with wood chips unavailable in this country. Gourmet was killed by its reach into the obscure, rather than paying attention to what real cooks want in this computer age!
I love all sorts of magazines and subscribe to them. I used to subscribe to Gourmet but I cancelled my subscriptions a few years ago. Why? I had been bored with it for several months but when the December issue arrived and it was not least bit Christmas-y, I called and cancelled and got a refund for my remaining months. The fun went out of this magazine long ago. I was not surprised that Gourmet folded.
I guess i might be typical of many. I used to subscribe to 4 computer magazines, Smithsonian and the magazine from the pro organization I'm a member of. Smithsonian went first. Then the computer mags died off and were not replaced. I still get the org magazine, since I have no choice, but I switched to electronic copy and I don't read it. They just didn't answer my needs.
I never did much with cooking magazines like Gourmet, preferring cookbooks. I have a Best of Gourmet cookbook and a Southern Living one, as well as a slew of others, but again, I seldom use them. They don't answer my needs.
If I'm going to subscribe to anything, they will either have to answer a need or pique my interests and modern periodicals just don't, and there are things where the dollars are better placed.
I am very saddened that "Gourmet" was canceled as I'm afraid it may be representative of what's to come in this time and place we are all living in. Magazines are a wonderful meditative experience. Pouring over recipes that bring to mind different areas of this ever-shrinking world where cultures are merging and blurring, not that I think its a bad thing when different cultures find common ground, but to lose what makes us all unique and different is something to be mourned. Give me a book with pages any day, but don't make me read Hemingway from a "gameboy".
If we have a subscription that is relatively new, what to do? I haven't received any info about substituting another magazine like Bon Apetit. I keep Gormet in my waiting room and my patients love to browse it. Too bad. It's nice to imagine far away places with fabulous food. Great photos of food :-)
I would disagree completely with Christopher Kimball's assessment. I used to subscribe to both magazines, now I subscribe to neither. Gourmet was food porn for people who liked to fantasize about traveling to faraway destinations and glittering metropolises to eat. When people could no longer do those things, they gave up the subscription. The recipes were wonderful, and always worked.
Cook's Illustrated, on the other hand, is full of articles by snarky yuppies who apparently have been deliberately assigned to develop recipes for things they had never made successfully before and don't really like anyway. The results are uniformly weird, as they have no idea about what the dish is supposed to even be like.
I disagree, "Cooks Illustrated" is one of my favorite magazines. I love how they take the approach of a scientist and break down the experiments of creating the best outcome for the final dish. For people like me, who would rather learn vicariously than to have to experience my own failure, sometimes a very expensive thing, this works well. Christopher Kimball is a great "foodie" and I am very thankful for his energy, I only wish his magazine was available to purchase from my kid's magazine fundraiser from school.
Stay off Kimball's email list! He's always got some lame offer he's sending surrounded by hokey Yankee Magazine stories about life in Vermont.
You want science with your food? Try Alton Brown! He's free on the Food Network and has several cookbooks out!
With all due respect, Gourmet has been dying a lingering death of pretension and too much advertising since the moment is was purchased by Condé Nast in 1983.
RIP Gourmet -- I have missed and will continue to miss the magazine that Earle R. MacAusland produced so beautifully for so many years.
To be honest, I have been bored with Gourmet and barely read my issue when they arrive. How many hot new, best new restaurants can you read about? I must agree with those who compare it with Conde Nast Traveler - stopped that subscription when the magazine became a monthly list of "the best" (code for "outrageously expensive) everything, and stopped publishing travel articles of substance and real information beyond room cost and a description of the view.
Gourmet has become the same type of slick, pretentious rag, and there are too many other food periodicals of substance (Saveur, etc.) that run circles around it. I won't miss it.
Gourmet is pretentious and Saveur is not? Gimme a break.
No, Saveur isn't pretentious. The food and cultures they feature are things that anyone can cook and that all sorts of people - not just the wealthy 1% can aspire to. I love an excellent gourmet meal with a good bottle of wine as much as anyone. But I agree that I just didn't fit the Conde Nast 'profile' for Gourmet, because I can't afford their concept of 'the best' and didn't agree with it! Saveur is a lot less pretentious and more fun to read and cook from!
Excellent read, suspect that you are spot on in your analysis and clearly Chuck Townsend voted for mediocrity which, in today's business world, is cheaper and can be reached with far less effort. Did the internet put pressure, of course, just look at the number of newspapers and radio stations taking a dive. But, in the end, it takes less effort to compete at the bottom....
Gourmet died because their Betty Draper readership is 85 years old!
I will miss Gourmet--I happened to subscribe to both Gourmet and Bon Appetit and have for 30+ years--I read them both largly for the writing and less for the recipes. I also use Epicurious and often comment.
I also watch Christopher Kimball's shows and while he is correct about expertise--I resent having to pay for using his online site if I am a subscriber to the magazine..
On the other hand I subscribe to at least 4 other food magazines and nothing -- including Bon Appetit holds a candle to Gourmet.
I miss Domenique at House and Garden and I will miss Ruth at Gourmet--luckily Ruth has a Conde Nast/Gourmet book in her future. Writing was key to these magazines ant that is what we are losing when we hand our food magazines over to Rachel Ray and Paula Deen...
I'm with you on greedy Kimball!!
This guy is the king of nickel and dime-ing you to death!
His Cook's Country is just old test kitchen stuff re-purposed!
And the level of spam I get from him is unmatched!
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