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Photos: Laundry Day in L.A.
One Way to Take Care of Business
If you follow any "foodies" on Twitter you may have woken up to a stream of 140 character obit-like wails echoing the death rattle that's just been shook at print publication mega-player Conde Nast. They've just announced that they're going to close up shop at Gourmet magazine, a 68-year-old monthly whose colorful photos and thoughtful words have inspired cooks and eaters here in Los Angeles and around the world for decades.
Although it should not be too shocking to hear that a print publication is going kaput--in an era of written media gone increasingly electronic, paper-waste conscious consumerism trending high, and that pesky old economy tugging at our purse strings and wallets a $5-an-issue glossy certainly seems expendable, no matter its legacy. And it is, indeed, that bottom line that forced the hand of Conde Nast:
The cuts come at the conclusion of a three-month study by McKinsey & Company, which conducted analysis of Condé Nast’s costs, and told several magazines to cut about 25 percent from their budgets. These are the first closings announced by the company since the McKinsey study.They are, however, cuts of titles that are much older than the usual selections for shut-down, like their Domino and Portfolio titles that disappeared in the last year or so. In addition to Gourmet, they're also closing Modern Bride, Cookie, and Elegant Bride, but their other food pub, the younger Bon Appetit, will remain open for now.
So are blogs to blame, in some small--or large--way for print disappearing? Is it a fair trade to lose a couple hundred glossy pages folded into your mailbox once a month for shorter, possibly interactive, online stories and massive recipe indexes in which you search and from which you print--or just display on your monitor--while you cook?
One Twitter user kids: "Gourmet probably took the $25 to stop writing about food," indicating Eater's poorly-received gimmick offering cash for a blog's shut-down. $25 bucks or 25%, no matter how you look at it, savor that November issue of Gourmet: It's your last.
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140 characters just isn't enough to convey the pain I feel. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
oooooooooooooooo!
Damn you, Conde Nast. You keep Brides, Modern Bride, AND Elegant Bride? Seriously? Do you really need three bride publications and no Gourmet? I hate you.
OKAY YOU GUYS LISTEN
One: I love Gourmet. LOVE LOVE LOVE the writing, the art direction, the general touch and feel and magic of the magazine. I do love print. How can you not! My mother still subscribes, also to People and Vanity Fair and Oprah's magazine, whatever it's called, and my mom, she still rips pages out every magazine and puts them in her cooking notebooks. And then she makes it and we eat it!
But ALSO: I don't subscribe to food magazines anymore. And I'm a pretty serious cook! And I used to be a magazine JUNKIE! But now I just look stuff up on the INTERNET omg I know, I'm terrible. I don't even click on ads. EVER. I know. TERRIBLE. I get my words for free. It's weird. Especially since I spend a lot of money every month on BOOKS. I know, again! I suck up free content on the internet 24-7, and yet I'm still compelled to spend $60 per month on various "serious" sci-fi/fantasy novels that Google Books cannot reproduce for me. 'Splain that one, Lucy.
ANYWAY, point is: sucks that Gourmet bit the big one, but jeezy creezy, you guys, put money into your internet products, work on AWESOME CONTENT, and readers/money will come. :D