Twitter and the bloggers killed Gourmet, one editor says. We beg to differ
Filed under: Media
Christopher Kimball, the bow-tied founder, editor and publisher of Cook's Illustrated magazine and its related media empire, has an opinion about why Gourmet will fold this month after 68 glorious years at the top of America's food-magazine newsstand. Amanda Hesser, a food writer who in 2008 accepted a buyout from the New York Times, where she had been food editor of the Sunday magazine, agrees.Both say: It was the internet whodunnit. But that's where their agreement ends.
Kimball and Hesser, both titans among foodies, consider Gourmet a valued institution, and seem genuinely sad about its demise. But while Hesser sees Gourmet as the Titanic of the food media world -- gorgeous, expensive, doomed by the iceberg of the internet -- Kimball's maritime analogies are more blunt. Gourmet is, he says, "ending a long and masterful turn at the helm of the food publishing world." He goes on to worry that professional writers will be put out of business, that media will "fully become an everyman's playing field, without the need for credentials or paid membership."
The failing of the magazine, Kimball says, "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." And then comes the zinger: real food writers, he says, should "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."
Kimball, cowed but unapologetic, responded on his own blog. I suppose he felt it was smart to make up with the Tweeters: "Yes, I have made many friends on Twitter and found many of the voices there better informed on coffee-making and similar topics that I am. Plus, some of you are actually quite funny." He still thinks his broccoli casserole (made 75 times in his test kitchen) is better than Google's favorite.
Hesser, to be fair, has built her career upon the belief that the internet -- the crowdsourced, search engine-optimized broccoli casserole recipe -- is the future. Her new venture, food52.com, is exactly what Kimball would identify as a really, really bad idea: readers submit a collection of recipes each week on one theme, then vote upon the recipes they love (or that their friends contributed), and the winning recipes are finally collected in a cookbook of, yes, 52 recipes.
Hesser's got this figured out, and Kimball's wrong. For her, it is all about the Web site. Gourmet, she noted, understood that much of its readers' conversation on food took place online, and last year it created Gourmet.com. "They saw the iceberg, but couldn't turn the ship in time, and in true Condé Nast style, the band kept playing until they were under water," Hesser writes. "Gourmet's Web site, which is still running, is handsome and sleek, but it is like an insect in amber -- an object to admire, impossible to touch." And so bad, she says, that it annoyed its readers.
I'll bite. Yes, Gourmet.com is annoying, its design unintelligible. And yes, it's hard to compete against the Twittered complaints and raves of minor social-media celebs. Gourmet's recipes surely don't have the search engine power of that-one-with-the-Ritz-crackers.
But I don't buy the internet-killed-the-magazine-star argument. I've long thought that Gourmet's management (along with the rest of Condé Nast) cheapened its image by selling its subscriptions in the traditional sweepstakes model -- at super-low cost, and often as a perk with your frequent-flier miles or the association with some sketchy door-to-door sales organization or another. As the economy faltered, the traditional ad sales model needed to be rethought. And the really successful magazines are selling subscriptions for three times the cost of a one-year sub to Condé's Gourmet or Bon Appétit. Magazines like Saveur and, oddly, Kimball's Cook's Illustrated.
I say "oddly" because, as Hamilton Nolan at Gawker points out, Kimball should know this way better than anyone else. In 1990, Condé Nast bought Kimball's magazine and proceeded to close it, all the while throwing money about in the way Condé Nast publications are (or used to be) wont to do. Kimball relaunched Cook's Illustrated much later, on a subscription-only model, and has a premium content web site that keeps him in silk bowties and test-kitchen aprons.
The model that makes a successful magazine is simple -- impossible for Gourmet to have achieved, given its history, but simple. It goes like this: Don't spend too much on expense accounts, fabulous perks, fancy offices, and overwrought photo shoots. Instead, spend on high-quality writing and one careful test kitchen. Price your magazine so that readers and advertisers associate it with quality. Price it for your target market. Not for Publisher's Clearing House.
I do believe that, by and large, the magazine-publishing industry of yesteryear is being quickly dismantled. But the "credentialed" writers and editors of that time are being replaced by personable, approachable, creative food writers of the future. Their models of publishing can be vastly cheaper, because they don't expect the Anna Wintour treatment. And, now as ever, when it comes down to it, quality content will win.
Try not to upset your Twitter audience, though, Mr. Kimball, or your quality will be tainted by your personality. And Ms. Hesser? Your bias is showing. Best keep that under your toque for now and let your web site win on its content, not on its lucky comparison to a sorely missed magazine.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-10-2009 @ 3:47AM
Unfinbec said...
The death of Gourmet was not caused by new technology, the internet, Twitter, or the notion that print magazine’s are passé.
For a business, any business, to succeed (magazines included), it must clearly define its target audience, it must absolutely tailor its offerings to the needs and wants of that audience, and it must reliably and consistently deliver the goods in the form the target audience wants them, and at a price the target audience is willing to pay. Those businesses that consistently meet the standards demanded by their target audiences are the ones that succeed, those that do not are bound to fail (unless Uncle Sam bails them out, but that’s another story)/
While many assign blame for the demise of Gourmet to Ruth Reichl and her thorough debasement of Gourmet’s once proud image after she became the magazine’s Editor-in Chief in 1999, we should keep in mind that, though she is certainly not blameless, she was largely “just following orders.” The demise of Gourmet can be laid directly at the feet of American corporate greed in general, and Condé Nast’s total lack of strategic vision in particular.
The moment Condé Nast purchased the classy Magazine of Good Living in 1983 from the estate of Earle MacAusland, its founder and Editor-in-Chief, Gourmet’s eventual death was totally predictable. Jane Montant, who succeeded MacAusland as Editor-in-Chief upon his death in 1980, made a valiant effort to maintain the magazine’s image of quality and of a classy and trusted old family friend, but meddling from the corporate honchos who mandated her to enhance revenue by any means or else, made it virtually impossible.
Under Earle MacAusland, Gourmet knew its target audience very well: urbane, cultured people who would not dream of compromising on quality. Gourmet under MacAusland catered to its audience’s every whim and had a loyal following of subscribers, pass-along readers, and high-end advertisers. The magazine had an aura of exclusivity. It was a phenomenal success!
Condé Nast, in its infinite stupidity, thought that it could maintain the same degree of loyalty from Gourmet’s old constituencies while attempting to increase revenue by also appealing to the mass market. The result was absolutely predictable: traditional high-end advertisers went elsewhere, affluent subscribers let their subscriptions lapse, and a generation raised on Paula Deen, Rachel Ray and Ritz crackers canapés found the magazine too stuffy and presumptuous for their taste and never warmed up to it.
If you wish to succeed by going after the exclusive champagne and caviar crowd, you must remain exclusive and must consistently meet the needs, wants, and whims of that crowd, and price your offerings accordingly. But attempting to attract such a crowd while at the same time making your offerings available to the lunch pail masses will only result in alienating the lunch pail folks who will never trust you while the exclusive champagne and caviar crowd will not give you the time of day.
In business, the playing field is the mind of the consumer and the name of the game is “market positioning:” how you position your business so as to capture a share of the target consumer’s mind determines whether you succeed or fail. In MacAusland’s mind (as well as in Jane Montant’s), Gourmet was unique and had no competition; it behaved accordingly and it succeeded. Under Ruth Reichl’s and in the minds of Condé Nast honchos, Gourmet saw its competition coming from Rachel Ray, Paula Deen, and the Food Network; it, too, behaved accordingly… and now Gourmet is history. RIP.
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10-10-2009 @ 6:26AM
dontbefooled said...
Bravo! I couldn't have said it better myself. As a Publishing executive I to watched the untouchable Gourmet change over the last 2 years. It was a very quick change and I have no doubt that it was the Conde Nast machine that pushed the editors towards Ritz crackers and Cheese Whiz.
I grew up with the leather bound Gourmets and my parents cooking out of their favorite Gourmet magazines. There was no internet, but in the end it was the big Epicureous machine that would eventually be their pride and joy and Bon App that could carry as you so eloquently put it (the lunch pail set) advertising.
Having worked at Conde it is all about fitting in and Gourmet just lost it's place as Conde went ultra high brow (of which all of those magazines are suffering) and low brow,,,too bad
10-10-2009 @ 3:10PM
JD said...
You write that Mr. Kimball may have found food52.com to be a "really really bad idea", and that may well be true. Nevertheless, a worse idea is to write about something when it is clear that you have not done your research. This is particularly egregious when that research consists of spending ten minutes poking around a website. Had you done that, you might have realized that there are TWO contests per week, for starters. Further, while it is true users submit recipes, it is Ms. Hesser (and food52.com co-founder Merrill Stubbs) that select the categories and then narrow down the recipes to determine the finalists that are ultimately voted on for inclusion in the cookbook. (The cookbook, by the way, will contain roughly three times the number of recipes you inaccurately reported would be included.) Thus, the idea that one can simply vote for their friends' recipes as if this is an internet baby-photo contest is a gross mischaracterization.
Further, you call out Ms. Hesser for showing bias in an opinion piece. Is this not the point? To criticize the author of an opinion piece for showing bias is akin to condemning a politician for his ambition, or a clergyman for being overly religious.
Am I biased towards food52? Yes. But that doesn't change the fact that this was a poorly-researched piece.
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10-11-2009 @ 8:58AM
Ellie Fishman said...
Do I get my money back for the balance of my subscription?
10-11-2009 @ 1:57PM
joeomar said...
Mr. Kimball's comments about "broccoli casserole" were about the decline of professional food writers and the trend towards the general public putting "grandma's" recipes on the Internet. He was correct. Food-writing and recipe publishing is NOT something just "anyone" can do - it involves MUCH more than simply creating a list of ingredients and saying "stir and bake". I've looked at many "grandma" recipes on the Internet and tried a few, and easily 80% or more of them are garbage. Now I only stick to recipes published by professionals. And even THAT'S no guarantee.
A year or two ago Consumer Reports evaluated cookbooks for the clarity of the recipe and ability to achieve consistent results. You'd think it would be easy to write a recipe. Instead they found cookbooks / recipes where ingredients were vague or missing, instructions incomplete or confusing, and where the final product would be wildly inconsistent between attempts. Not surprisingly, Martha Stewart's cookbooks were among the best. TV personalities also get their share of criticism; it's not easy to come up with enough recipes for a daily cooking show, and as a result many of the recipes are simply bad in every way.
If even the "pro's" can't be relied on, can you really trust some anonymous recipe you found on the Internet? Say, someone who puts up a recipe for "Grandmas chicken-broccoli casserole" which failed to tell you to use COOKED chicken, NOT RAW (Grandma didn't mention that in the recipe because it's "just obvious")? I don't think so. Kimball is right - if you start using amateur recipes you find on the Internet YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED.
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10-11-2009 @ 6:08PM
JR said...
Anyone who says the decision to kill Gourmet was editorial is either an idiot or has something to gain by saying so. It doesn't matter if you liked the late magazine or not, or if you even read it (seriously, Cheez Whiz and Ritz Crackers? WTF are you talking about?), the closing was obviously done to boost Bon Appetit, which is an easier magazine to sell to advertisers. I imagine McKinsey said it had to be one or the other and they saw more upside with closing Gourmet. Conde Nast wasn't interested in making Gourmet more expensive and lowering the rate base--that's a long-term solution; this was a decision based on short-term goals.
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10-11-2009 @ 8:51PM
Greg said...
I share Kimball's fear of the loss of credibility in journalism as the WWW takes the place of printed media. I really don't care much about that effect in fashion, food, auto or the like, but news needs credibility, which requires credentials, solid editing and professionalism. Of course, even that has not been enough to keep journalistic scandals from happening, but they are few and far between. Drop the journalistic ethics and professionalism and there won't be even the possibility of scandal--because there will be no expectation of credibility.
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10-11-2009 @ 8:54PM
Greg said...
Interesting analysis, JR. Sounds as you are very conversant in the area.
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