“A mad reader is an engaged reader!” This we know. Everyone who has ever worked in media time-out-of-mind knows this. The blogosphere is built on this model. Cable News increasingly so. Still, knowing that didn’t stop me from being angry; angrier still that it had worked. And it does work. But why does it always seems to work best when women are shown at their marginalized worst? The answer: Sexism sells.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just sensitive because last year, NYO writer Spencer Morgan featured me in a piece about how awesome it was for a 36-year-old guy to nail 23-year-old girls, until he realized that when it was time to be responsible and settle down he needed a boring old 36 year old….who was so boring that she drove him back to 23 year olds.

Ruth Reichl did a Q&A in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine and talked briefly about the loss of her magazine. Reichl revealed that Si Newhouse informed her “not on email” (snap!) about Gourmet‘s “stunning” demise, and also discussed why she feels The New Yorker will remain “untouched” forever.

Mere hours after Condé Nast announced that the venerable Gourmet was among the four titles to be shut down in the wake of their McKinsey evaluation, Curbed Media’s Eater blog, which recently went national, was already picking at the bones. Their cheeky proposal after the jump.

Yesterday Eater, Lockhart Steele‘s Curbed Media food blog, expanded its reach with the launch of a national site, Eater National. And, in order to make coast-to-coast domination a little easier, the site is paying anybody with a food blog $25 to hang it up and post an Eater ad as their final piece of content.