The loss of a valuable resource
Events
October 9th, 2009
Gourmet magazine is gone, and its demise has less to do with the quality and relevance of its content than with a journalism model that needs to get fixed, quick, before we lose access to even more well-reported and well-curated news and information (pick a topic, any topic).
Gourmet was an institution, sure, though to hear the response from the mainstream news press this week, it was a throwback in both structure and content, doomed to irrelevance. I couldn’t disagree more.
As Alex Van Buren said in Salon this week, this glossy “got it” in ways that the other food-centric magazines don’t. Food isn’t just about recipes that work. For some, food is the most interesting intersection ever crossed. It’s all there–politics, class, commerce, science, literature, high and low culture–with recipes, of course.
Gourmet covered this intersection. It invested in reporting and its Politics of the Plate column was a must-read, especially when the subject was seafood. Its author, Barry Estabrook, translated complicated policies and politics into readable pieces that conveyed the urgent need to support sustainable seafood.
But there were also philosophical pieces on lobster and human nature, cultural backgrounds on ingredients like sardines and squid, and reports on how chefs were treating seafood in the restaurants. Along with recipes that worked.
Gourmet’s appeal was probably limited for many people, and there are still many food magazines left in its wake. But in the rear-view, I hope that its legacy shows us the richness of a world that exists when we start paying very close attention to the food on our plates.
