I’m a very food-obsessed person, so I’ve been following the news of Conde Nast shutting down Gourmet very closely and monitoring the fallout and reaction from it. A few local chefs are devastated, and editor Ruth Reichl was set to make an appearance this Saturday at the Twin Cities Book Festival (appearance has since been canceled).
Yesterday, Christopher Kimball (Cook’s Illustrated publisher, America’s Test Kitchen host) had an op-ed in the New York Times, with an overriding theme of uncertainty as to whether a mass of (mostly-amateur) voices on the internet will be a catalyst for the fall of quality, expert journalism and publishing. The op-ed takes on the issue of paid content online, and how it’s necessary to ensure the experts who create this content are compensated to keep the content coming.
Personally, I think consumers get smarter every year. I think, while it may take a while, news and information consumers will realize they want to get the best information available, and they will probably be willing to pay the price. Think about iTunes – what if you could get the same song for free, but the audio just wasn’t quite as clear as the paid version. You would undoubtedly buy it. On another personal note, I don’t necessarily think it is within the right of network news organizations (like my own) to charge for content, considering the public service we provide, and the fact you can get our programming over the air with no premium cost (but that’s another discussion).
Anyway, here’s the three paragraphs (non-consecutive) I found most applicable, with a link to the full op-ed.
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Now, 68 years after its founding, Gourmet has followed American Cookery, ending a long and masterful turn at the helm of the food publishing world. This, hard on the heels of the death of Julia Child in 2004, makes one tremulous about the future. Is American magazine publishing on the verge of being devoured by the democratic economics of the Internet? Has the media industry fully become an everyman’s playing field, without the need for credentials or paid membership? Or, to ask the questions that every media executive is really whispering, “Will I have a job next year?”
The shuttering of Gourmet 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. They can no longer be coronated; their voices have to be deemed essential to the lives of their customers. That leaves, I think, little room for the thoughtful, considered editorial with which Gourmet delighted its readers for almost seven decades.
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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/opinion/08kimball.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
