I am among the many saddened to have learned that Gourmet magazine will publish its last issue next month. It is a casualty of the current economic malaise as well as larger forces reshaping our society.
Gourmet has been an inspiration to me for years. It is among the catalysts for my view of travel that focuses on experience, authenticity, and adventure that can be part of even the most mundane business trip if you approach it with the right frame of mind. Gourmet was always about more than recipes — it was about our physical and spiritual relationship with food and the places where we encouter food whether in the field, in the kitchen, or on the plate. Nourishment in every sense of the word. It offered consistently intelligent and insightful travel writing (my favorite part of the magazine).
I do extensive research before I travel and Gourmet has been a regular resource as I make the list of places to evaluate for posting on Executive Nomad. Much like my old issues of European Travel & Life (where I once worked — the obit is remarkably similar in tone), I think Gourmet will remain a resource for some time to come. Ruth, if you or any of your staff want to contribute to Executive Nomad, just let me know.
Most of the commentary on the closing I’ve read have focused on the flight of advertisers from print in general or to titles that are more focused on practical how-to features. Gourmet has always been aspirational and I think that we are no longer an aspirational nation. We have become much more sophisticated about food and the world in general so people may no longer look to the guidance on how to expand their worlds (though, to me, that is the beginning of both intellectual and physical death). We have become used to acquiring rather than aspiring. You don’t dream about a killer kitchen, you dip into your home equity and get one (well, at least until recently). We’ve also succumbed to our over-busy, over-fragmented, over-scheduled lives and our reach is more limited: a great (and I use the term loosely) 30-minute meal for the family rather than a knockout, five-course dinner party for 10 that would include engaging conversation long into the evening.
I don’t doubt that few of us lived that life regularly but we did each month in the pages of that magazine. It was, in many ways, more dream book than how-to manual. Advertisers prefer how-to. The “insert tab A into slot B” connection is easy for them to understand. I like how-to as well but not to the exclusion of what-could-be. Find me a how-to magazine that had a significant impact on the larger conversation. Martha Stewart Living may come to mind but Martha has always been focused on a larger mission of bringing elegance to everyday life. How-to is simply a vehicle, not an end in itself.
Gourmet was also criticized for catering to an elite. It did and I’m proud to count myself among that elite — an elite that I see as open, democratic, and welcoming to all who hunger for deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. Apparently we are dwindling in number and getting too old to matter to many advertisers. That is sad on many fronts.
Finally, a bit about the finances of magazines. They were never meant to make a lot of money. They were meant to make a reasonable return in good times and not lose the whole pot when the economy got tight. This is one reason why I never understood private equity’s interest in publishing except to the extent that they see a situation where they can quickly extract some value and then push the corpse into the river. Don’t go into publishing to get rich. If you manage to obtain great wealth, consider yourself extraordinarily lucky.
Magazines have been a way to unite people with imagination but not much money with people with money but not much imagination. Perhaps you made a bundle in cement. Perfectly respectable but not very sexy. Invest some of that bundle in a magazine and you suddenly get invited to the right parties, hang out with some artsy people, get a little wild. You may get Park Avenue respectability or downtown street cred depending on the title. You get a tax loss to offset of that cement money. You get to have some fun and expand your horizons. Perhaps you even get laid. That, Mr. (or Ms.) Moneybags, is your ROI.
And, as Kelvin Thompson and I discussed on the MontaRosa blog, it will be intriguing to see if the same CEO who has presided over all of the cuts at Conde Nast can also lead an aggressive expansion into new media and titles.
There is an interesting review of a history of Ramparts magazine in the Times today that shows the difference between a magazine with editorial balls and most of the pack:
Ramparts stood apart from the brawling underground press of the 1960s not only because of the quality of its writing, but also for its élan, its aura of brewing drama.The magazine looked good. It was printed on glossy stock and, rare for an alternative magazine, had national distribution. (In 1968 its circulation was nearly 250,000, more than double that of The Nation.) Its covers were provocative, occasionally bordering, Mr. Richardson acknowledges, on seditious. One infamous Ramparts cover from 1969 depicted a 6-year-old boy holding a Vietcong flag. The caption said: “Alienation is when your country is at war, and you want the other side to win.”
Gourmet was hardly radical or underground but it had recently become more political, looking at the ethics of food and food production. I don’t see Rachel Ray taking on that challenge (but I’d welcome it if she did — the debate could use a little perkiness).
Executive Nomad is my magazine. I’ll likely never have glossy paper or extravagant photo shoots but they aren’t the point. We need people pushing the dialog and advancing our discussions. Ruth Reichl and her team at Gourmet did that. I’ll miss them and look for their voices to reemerge. In the meantime, I’ll try to honor them as my fellow Nomads and I carry on the good fight.