Word comes today that Gourmet Magazine is the latest victim of the recession. One of the tragedies of this recession is the closing of good businesses. In media, Domino and other good magazines have closed because of lack of advertiser support. Or, perhaps, for a different reason.
Occasionally for popular media, viewer or reader movements have stopped closings. Gourmet is certainly popular among its readers. It's the advertisers who aren't supporting it. But, subscribers don't pay enough to keep the business viable. For readers to save Gourmet, they'd have to show advertisers their value. They'd also have to pay more for content. Read the comments in the NY Times note about the closing. Many love the content, and love getting more information online.
Current media models show that consumers love content, but don't love paying. High quality content costs money. Through mass selection, good content still comes through, but filtering is required to find it. Through this model, Gourmet doesn't work as a business. What if Gourmet recreated itself only with editors, who did nothing but surf the internet for highest quality food content that is Gourmet-worthy? This sounds like a Google model. Ouch.
Cookie, Modern Bride & Elegant Bride fell victim as well.
Posted by: Cici | October 05, 2009 at 03:37 PM
your r.i.p on gourmet magazine didn't mention that conde nast was backing its younger sibbling, bon appetite. being older, i personally prefer gourmet. in fact, we just renewed our subscription. i wonder how conde nast wil hande?
Posted by: elvine | October 06, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Wouldn't surprise me at all if you're automatically subscribed in to Bon Appetit.
Posted by: Jonathan Hutter | October 07, 2009 at 08:43 AM
An interesting blog post today by Steve Blacker on "Why Gourmet was a recipe for disaster," notes the mast head in the latest issue of Gourmet lists 111 full time staffers- just 2 of which are fully devoted to online. Its not surprising they could not build a profitable digital strategy that way.
Here is the link:
http://www.jackmyers.com/commentary/steve-blacker/63991857.html
Posted by: Cici | October 12, 2009 at 10:11 PM
Wow, that's some damning data.
Posted by: Jonathan Hutter | October 14, 2009 at 10:11 AM