Posted by Various Publications on October 06, 2009 at 12:18:19:
Los Angeles Times
Conde Nast's closure of Gourmet shakes up magazine industry
The end of the venerable publication and three others underscores the swift and brutal fall of the once highflying business amid a steep drop in ad revenue.
By Walter Hamilton and Russ Parsons
October 6, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and New York - Two years ago, Conde Nast's Vogue published its biggest issue, an advertising-packed behemoth that symbolized the prosperity of New York's glittering magazine industry as it rode the twin booms in the economy and luxury spending to dramatic heights.
Generous expense accounts were de rigueur at glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines. Some top editors and publishers enjoyed clothing allowances and mortgage assistance. Even lowly assistants flitted about in chauffeur-driven town cars.
But that culture has been turned on its head as the magazine business reels from the battered economy, the drop in advertising revenue and restraints on expenses.
Conde Nast's unexpected closure Monday of venerable Gourmet and three other magazines underscored the swift and brutal fall of what had been one of the city's most elite and free-spending industries.
The folding of Gourmet, in particular, shook up the insular magazine world. The 69-year-old arbiter of culinary taste was edited by Ruth Reichl, a bestselling author and former restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. The closure caught Reichl herself flat-footed.
"Like everyone else, I found out this morning," she said. "I can't talk about it now, it's too raw. I've got to pack up my office."
Reichl elaborated in a Twitter message to readers: "Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support. It means a lot. Sorry not to be posting now, but I'm packing. We're all stunned, sad."
For Conde Nast, surviving the recession and a steep drop in ad revenue was paramount in the decision to close Gourmet, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Cookie magazines.
"These changes, combined with cost and workforce reductions now underway throughout the company, will speed the recovery of our current businesses and enable us to pursue new ventures," Chief Executive Charles H. Townsend said.
Among those new initiatives, to be detailed in the coming weeks, he said, are digital versions of the company's brands using "new devices and distribution channels."
The moves mark a new cover story: Cost cutting is suddenly in style.
Publishers have closed numerous magazines this year, reduced the circulation and frequency of some publications and tossed dozens of journalists out of work. The result is a downsizing of the industry's larger-than-life character.
"I don't think we'll ever see the heyday again," said Roberta Garfinkle, director for print strategy at TargetCast tcm, which buys advertising for large companies. "The business will come back as the economy starts to rebound, but certainly not to the levels it was once."
The carnage at Conde Nast -- the queen bee of New York glossies with such marquee titles as Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker -- shouldn't have been a surprise given that Conde had two food magazines and three bridal titles.
There had been rumors that Gourmet might be in the cross hairs because Conde Nast also owns its chief competitor, Bon Appetit, based in Los Angeles. Bon Appetit has more readers than Gourmet, 1.3 million to 950,000, Conde Nast said.
Gourmet also had a reputation for being expensive to publish, with long features by well-known writers. Bon Appetit was focused on recipe-driven content.
The industry contraction is being driven by the plunge in ad pages -- the lifeblood of the industry.
Ad pages have slumped 22% industrywide this year, and some publications have suffered far worse, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Vogue is off 33%, Architectural Digest is down 49%, and Esquire has fallen 27%.
At Conde Nast's two food publications, Gourmet saw a 46.9% drop in ad revenue and a 50% decline in ad pages in the second quarter from last year's April-June period, while Bon Appetit's revenue fell 36% and ad pages declined 40%, according to Publishers Information Bureau.
It's unclear whether the drop in advertising has hit bottom, but throughout the industry employees and experts are bracing for more job cuts.
Conde Nast's closure of Gourmet shakes up magazine industry
The end of the venerable publication and three others underscores the swift and brutal fall of the once highflying business amid a steep drop in ad revenue.
"There is fear everywhere," said Samir Husni, who heads the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. "Fear of losing jobs, fear of losing entire magazines."
The culture and spending at BusinessWeek are far more subdued than at Conde Nast's glamour magazines, but employees' fear for their jobs is palpable. Owner McGraw-Hill Cos. put the well-regarded but money-losing magazine on the block over the summer, and its writers, well-versed in chronicling corporate America's downsizing, expect deep cuts regardless of who buys the magazine.
"There's a sense of the inevitable," said one employee who did not want to be identified for fear of antagonizing bosses. "However this shakes out, a lot of people are going to be out of work."
The cutbacks carry a particular sting at Conde Nast because of the company's famous spending habits and the imperious manners of some top editors.
The main character in the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" was a thinly veiled knockoff of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. And prized editors and publishers are as recognizable for their appearances at the trendiest restaurants and fanciest parties as for the stewardship of their publications.
Conde Nast had hired management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to review its operations, and McKinsey recommended roughly 25% budget cuts at some magazines.
More temperate spending has been showing up in ways large and small.
At last month's Fashion Week in New York, a must-be-seen event for the glitterati of New York glamour magazines, some Vogue editors hailed cabs rather than hopping into waiting town cars as in years past, according to one observer.
That's a far cry from the 1999 launch party for Talk magazine -- a flashy but short-lived publication headed by celebrity editor Tina Brown and bankrolled by a joint venture of Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Magazines. It was an extravagant affair for 800 guests at the Statue of Liberty.
"It was one hell of a party," Garfinkle recalled. "You don't see that anymore."
BLOOMBERG]GOURMET SHUTS DOWN. An American Tragedy
By Greg Bensinger
Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Gourmet, the food and lifestyle magazine edited by former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, is shutting down after owner Condé Nast determined it could no longer sustain the publication’s losses.
The New York-based publisher closed Gourmet yesterday almost 70 years after the magazine was founded as a showcase for French chefs. Condé Nast, a unit of Advance Publications Inc., will also discontinue Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and parenting magazine Cookie, said Chief Executive Officer Chuck Townsend.
“There’s a great deal of sentimentality associated with Gourmet,” Townsend said in an interview yesterday, noting that the magazine was losing money. “It is the epitome of Condé Nast photography and journalism, but it’s a poor business.”
First published in January 1941, Gourmet has been run since 1999 by Reichl, also the author of multiple books on food. Advertising revenue at the magazine plunged 43 percent in the first half of 2009, a steeper drop than the U.S. industry average, as readers and marketers cut back in the recession.
“It will be a very different culinary world without Gourmet,” said Jacques Pépin, a dean of the French Culinary Institute in New York, author of numerous cookbooks, and a former contributor to the magazine. “When I came to the U.S. 50 years ago, there was Gourmet; that was it.”
Gourmet’s ad sales slid to $28.3 million in the first six months of the year from $49.5 million a year earlier, according to data from the Publishers Information Bureau. That 43 percent drop compares with a 21 percent decline for the U.S. magazine industry, to $9.1 billion, during the same period.
Ad sales probably won’t grow this year, Townsend said.
Luxury Ads
“Advertising is very slow to return, particularly for the luxury category,” Townsend said. “While the economy picks up some fundamental steam, I don’t think it’s fueled by the consumer.”
Industrywide, magazine circulation in the U.S. fell 1.2 percent in this year’s first half, including a 12 percent drop in sales at newsstands and supermarkets, according to data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Condé Nast hired consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in July to evaluate its magazine properties and other aspects of its business, said Maurie Perl, a spokeswoman for the publisher. About 180 employees will leave, she said.
Townsend said Reichl won’t remain with the company. Reichl wasn’t available to comment.
The chief executive also said he doesn’t plan any more magazine closures. Condé Nast plans to keep the Gourmet brand name to use for book and recipe sales, he said.
‘Terrible Implications’
“The demise of Gourmet has terrible implications for cookbook publishing,” said Pat Adrian, former editor-in-chief of the Good Cook cookbook club. “It signals that people don’t want to know the cultural background of the food or recipe they prepare.”
Reichl was the food critic for the New York Times before joining Gourmet and published memoirs revolving around food such as “Tender at the Bone” and “Comfort Me With Apples.” She was also a restaurant critic and food editor for the Los Angeles Times.
Gourmet’s total circulation fell less than 1 percent to 978,038 in the six months through June, compared with a year earlier, though the magazine’s single-copy newsstand sales plunged 25 percent in the same period, ABC data show.
Modern Bride’s single-copy sales dropped 20 percent to 129,000 and its total circulation fell 1.2 percent. Cookie boosted its circulation 4.9 percent to 566,274, while its single-copy sales fell 20 percent to 12,120. Data aren’t available for Elegant Bride.
Condé Nast in the past year closed its Portfolio, Domino and Golf for Women magazines. It folded Men’s Vogue into Vogue magazine. Cookie, founded in 2005, aimed to reach modern mothers
THE WEEK
Why Conde Nast is closing Gourmet
The critically acclaimed food magazine gets the ax despite rising circulation.
U.S. Business•Tuesday, October 6, 2009
This is a "sad day" for anyone who loves tasty recipes, "lush photography, and endlessly curious, immensely smart travel and food writing," said Sam Sifton in The New York Times. Condé Nast announced Monday that it is closing Gourmet (which another Times blogger described as "a magazine of almost biblical status in the food world"). The news came as a shock—the "literate, beautiful," 68-year-old magazine had a rising circulation, and was "widely thought to have been safe from the economy’s depredation."
"It’s not terribly shocking that Gourmet is now getting the ax," said The Wall Street Journal in its Speakeasy blog. Stricken by a deep advertising slump, Condé Nast just underwent a three-month study by McKinsey & Co. to see how it could cut costs (three other titles— Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, and Cookie—also will be closed). There are "similarities between Gourmet and Condé’s other food title, Bon Appétit—and in this economy redundancy is death."
To a casual reader, said Sheryl Julian in The Boston Globe, it seemed like Bon Appétit was the expendable one. Gourmet's superstar editor, Ruth Reichl, has brought the magazine many awards by focusing on publishing interesting articles.
"Bon Appétit doesn't seem to care much about writing but seems to invest a lot in recipes"—if you can find them among all the food ads. "But the food ads have kept BA alive, and lack of them has made Gourmet a relic."
It's chilling to think what the food world will be like without Gourmet, said Gabriella Gershenson in Time Out New York. "What will young people today who love food aspire to? Cheaply won celebrity chefdom?" Reality TV? Blogs with nothing but restaurant gossip? Let's hope people who "crave quality" find a way to fill the void.
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