Christopher Kimball, the bow-tied publisher of Cook’s Illustrated, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times that sheds some light on the demise of Gourmet, the venerable food glossy that billed itself “the magazine of good living.” Interestingly, Kimball doesn’t subscribe to the common theory that Gourmet died because publishers believe Americans found its journalism- and food-driven formula elitist (in contrast to the victorious Bon Appetit, aimed at the harried working mom who can’t be bothered to read about farmworker conditions in Florida or Peurto Rican barbecues for 12)
Instead, he argues that the Internet—with its “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”—is at least partly to blame.
To survive, those of us who believe that inexperience rarely leads to wisdom need to swim against the tide, better 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.
It’s an intriguing (and arguably, yes, elitist) notion: That expertise is hard won, and that the common denominator (the one that wins the advertising dollars) may also be the lowest.
Kimball himself is something of an expert in this regard. In 1990, Conde Nast (the owner of Gourmet and Bon Appetit) bought Cook’s and promptly shut it down. In 1993, Kimball started the magazine up again, this time with a model that included no advertising at all and relied entirely on paid subscribers. Sixteen years later, Cook’s is still going strong. In a media landscape where people are less likely to want to pay for content, it’s not a model that can work for many magazines, but for a publication that caters to an audience that wants their food writing curated, not random, Cook’s has shown that it can work quite well.
