Women’s Wear Daily

It’s no secret that magazines promote products. In our current climate of consumerism, it is sheer naivete to assume that the pair of pants you’re appreciating in a magazine was picked merely because they were aesthetically pleasing. No, chances are that an editor somewhere made a deal with a designer. E-commerce takes all this in to the open. Turner (a former Mediaite writer!) gives an example of Gilt Taste‘s content:

This week on the site, Reichl published an environmental impact essay by Gourmet alumnus Barry Estabrook about hydro-fracking’s impact on food. One click away, the reader-consumer can browse the Meat section of the site for different cuts of wagyu beef (Four 10-ounce New York strip steaks, $199). Elsewhere content and commerce are side by side: recipes by New York Times dining columnist Melissa Clark appear with some of the ingredients for sale in a sidebar (Le Sanctuaire Mini Salt Set, $42.).

Essentially, online retail companies like the Gilt Groupe and Net-a-porter have recognized that editorial content helps improve sales. If you’re reading a recipe that suggests you use a specific mini salt set, you’re more likely to run out and buy that mini salt set. So, with this in mind, these companies have started producing editorial content designed for sales. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be solid, quality editorial. Said Reichl: “if this was just a catalogue of products — no matter how wonderful — I wouldn’t want to be involved. What makes Gilt Taste unique is that it’s a new kind of magazine, one that has no ads and is supported solely by sales.”

It might be easy to dismiss these e-commerce ventures if not for the talent they’re attracting. Some of Gilt and Net-a-poter’s editors boast positions at GQ, British Esquire, Premiere, and, of course, The Times on their resumes. Having talented editors helps to create a stronger image for brands.

One commonly expressed concern about e-commerce is integrity. Journalists generally strive to separate “church and state”, or advertising and editorial. However, as was discussed above, any product-based journalism can and should be regarded as suspect in the present climate. Advertisers absolutely apply pressure to have their products featured in editorial. There is no separation between church and state. Gilt’s Susan Lyn explains how commerce companies escape the pressure that consumes the magazine industry:

I think when you talk about blurring the line between church and state for commerce companies, it’s a very different animal in that there is no advertiser there to protect against. There is nobody at our company who is pressuring our content people to cover X or Y product because there’s no incentive for us to do that.

So in a sense, e-commerce is more pure that magazine editorial. It is not advertisers who are controlling product placement: it’s business men and women who invest in products because they believe in them. Commerce is the right word: these publications are simply taking out the advertising middle men and finding it all the more profitable. To me, at least, this is refreshing and modern. We live in a consumer based society, might as well accept it. Perhaps WWD isn’t being far fetched in concluding that this might be the future.

(h/t)

Originally envisioned as an HBO comedy series, the project was sold as a feature to Fox years ago. A representative from the production company confirmed that “Garlic and Sapphires” is in “active development” but didn’t provide any more information. The details on IMDB are sparse but indicate a 2010 release, and according to its synopsis, the movie is about “a chef [who] tries to balance her career with writing a book, motherhood and divorce.” Seems off.

Very off, actually. The memoir, for those of you who haven’t read (if not, highly recommended) is about Reichl’s return (along with supportive husband and small child) to her native New York City in the early 1990′s after she is hired by the New York Times to be their new food critic. Reichl was famous during her tenure at the Times for dressing up in detailed costumes in order not to be recognized. Let’s hope the powers that be in Hollywood don’t butcher it too badly. As for casting, the Dish suggests Catherine Keener, though I think for the big screen Sandra Bullock might actually be able to pull it off (if it were small screen I’d say Kyra Sedgwick).

You can listen to the full interview below, in the meantime here’s some some interesting takeaways:

• “I was actually supposed to go to Washington D.C. to promote the book on monday and he [Newhouse] called me on Sunday night and said ‘you can’t go to Washington, you need to be in the office tomorrow’…it was a done deal. It was a surprise to all of us. I knew that the ad situation was really bad but Conde Nast had been a supporter of the magazine in every way and I thought that they would continue to be.”
• How she informed her staff: “I went around from office to office and said ‘we’re having this meeting but you should know that it’s terrible news. We were all really very much in shock…we were out very quickly….That night I said everybody come to my house and called up Russ and Daughters and said we need lots of wonderful food! And lots of wonderful food came to the house.”
• “This has been a particularly bad time for print media. I don’t think there’s ever been a situation quite like this one [in the media world]…Our ad page drop was really precipitous.”
• “I am sure that The New Yorker will march on forever, as long as Si Newhouse has anything to say about it…as well it should. It would be a terrible loss for the world if the New Yorker folded.”
• Sigh: “We had actually already made the December issue and it didn’t get printed.”
• Those waiting for the Gourmet memoir (yes please!) will have to wait a while longer. Reichl is apparently working on a new book she thought would be about her time at Gourmet, but “it’s turned into something else…I think I need a little distance.”

When Gourmet closed, its readers received sister publication Bon Appétit to fulfill what was left of their Gourmet subscriptions. In January, Bon Appétit will use that sub file to help boost its rate base 15 percent, to 1.5 million from 1.3 million. The increase still puts it behind its more mass competitors Cooking Light, which has a rate base of 1.75 million, and Every Day With Rachael Ray, which carries a 1.7 million circulation guarantee.

Reichl was featured in a Q&A in this Sunday’s NYT Magazine and talked briefly about the loss of her magazine — a decision the NYDN reports that many foodies feel is a “personal attack on the food industry.” Reichl revealed that Si Newhouse informed her “not on email” about Gourmet‘s “stunning” demise and why she feels The New Yorker will remain untouched forever.

How did you learn that your job no longer exists? Who told you?
Si.

Meaning S. I. Newhouse, who owns Condé Nast Publications. In an e-mail message or in person?
It was not an e-mail.

Sounds like phone.
It was a conversation. I wouldn’t in a million years have imagined this.

Did you ask him why Condé Nast was shuttering Gourmet while keeping afloat some 18 other magazines, including Bon Appétit and such giants of intellectual life as Golf World and Golf Digest?
I was so stunned, I basically just listened.

Do you think he has considered closing The New Yorker?
No. I would bet my life on that. I think that Si loves that magazine, and I think — this is just my opinion — it will remain untouched, and it will be there forever.

Gourmet’s circulation is about the same as that of The New Yorker — you have about a million subscribers, right?
I think it was more than that. It has a legendary renewal rate. They would never tell me exactly what it was. I kept asking: “What does that mean? What are you talking about?” And they just kept saying: “It’s great. People buy Gourmet forever.”

Did you see Jon Stewart the other night, when he made a Gourmet joke?
I did not. What did he say?

He mentioned that Condé Nast was shutting down four magazines — Gourmet, along with Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Cookie — and suggested that instead they could be combined into a new cost-cutting magazine called Pregnant Gourmet Bride.
That’s great! I’m amazed no one has told me that. I’m amazed my son didn’t at least e-mail me that.

Last week Newsweek speculated that Condé could see a $1 billion ad revenue drop in 2009. Today Keith Kelly at the New York Post is speculating the Newhouse family may be filling the money gap out of its own (very deep) pockets.

For the first time in nearly two decades, the Newhouse family is personally having to underwrite the losses at Condé Nast, a source told The Post. It’s one of the reasons for the intense cost-cutting at the glitzy — and historically profligate — magazine publisher run by billionaire Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr.

“It’s not just Si now,” said the source, who is close to Condé Nast. “It’s the family trust…”Si hates to lose money, and Si hates to lose money that he wasn’t planning to spend.”

Some industry observers predict losses at Condé Nast may hit $200 million this year, as the company is reeling from an advertising-revenue shortfall of more than $400 million. Newhouse having to dip into his own pockets to keep Condé Nast going comes at a time when his personal fortune has declined by about 50 percent in a year to just over $4 billion, according to Forbes.

Sheds a bit of a new light on things, doesn’t it? If you were floating a stable of magazines out of your own pocket you might be more inclined to let personal preference influence your decision-making. It’s long been rumored that Si has a soft spot for the New Yorker and in fact it was the only magazine at Condé to be spared the McKinsey interrogation (though as we’ve pointed out before, there are a number of reasons it may have qualified for this exemption). So it is just that Si doesn’t like to cook? Probably the decision-making process was slightly more complicated than that, though AdAge thinks Si’s personal approach to magazines has been a destructive force.

But [Gourmet's] owner, Condé Nast, the high church of glossy magazine publishers, has also maintained a steady magazine-rather-than-brand approach over the years that has increased its exposure to the recession and narrowed the range of possible responses. Quickly-changing conditions outside Condé’s soaring headquarters are extracting a price for that loyalty — and Gourmet, the first of the company’s crown jewels to fail, probably paid a portion of the cost.

Why didn’t Condé try harder to save Gourmet, perhaps by changing its business model? …Condé, which declined to comment for this article, may have modeled such possibilities and decided they wouldn’t work, or at least weren’t worth the effort. Yet observers feel that the frame for any such analysis is still set by the company chairman, S.I. Newhouse Jr., who remains true to a pair of longtime loves: gorgeous editorial products and ad pages to pay for them. He seems considerably less interested in digital revenue streams, subscription-based models, direct-to-consumer retail or even cross-platform media offerings.

The panic has apparently reached the op-ed pages of the New York Times, and it would seem a harsh reality is setting (crashing?) in. For all the things Condé should have done differently, and for all the charting of the brave new media world ahead that we immerse ours in, it’s still not pleasant to hear from old school magazine folks who have quite suddenly discovered very little of what they valued about their field, including their own careers, actually carries much (or any!) currency any more. Actually, it’s pretty awful. Writes Christopher Kimball, publisher of Cook’s Illustrated:

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.

Welcome aboard, I guess.

Both succeeded in segmenting the market with semi-independent divisions that were once unique and distinct but that have since faded into one, much to the confusion of consumers. Both have dramatically dumped once-valuable properties. Both have allowed divisions to operate like independent fiefdoms at the expense of the company’s greater financial good. Both have established cultures of privilege for top employees, and both appear to have woken up to their problems too late.”

– Slate’s Jack Shafer comparing the fate of Condé Nast, in the wake of yesterday’s shutterings, to that of that other overreaching, reality-ignoring American powerhouse, General Motors. Next up: Graydon Carter and Anna Wintour fly to Washington in their private jets to beg for a bailout! (Perhaps it isn’t merely a coincidence that Time opened an office in Detroit…maybe they’re also aiming to take notes.)

Still the shuttering of Gourmet remains to many the biggest shock; the 68 year old magazine is a staple in the Condé stable and enjoys a devoted following. The fate of its equally well-known editor Ruth Reichl is unknown right now, though considering the company plans to keep both the publishing and television arm of Gourmet active chances are they will find a place for her. That said, what does Reichl’s precarious position say about the fate of Condé’s other high profile editors?

We speculated earlier that the “cost and workforce reductions now underway throughout the company” mentioned in Chuck Townsend‘s memo suggested this was the beginning rather than the end of the McKinsey cuts (though apparently no more closures). No fashion titles were cut in this round, and we’ve heard speculation that this might be because much of the staffs of these titles are currently in Milan at the shows and that the cuts/shutterings might happen once they return.

So should Anna Wintour — or Graydon Carter for that matter! — be worried? Chances that Vogue will be shuttered, of course, are slim to none and same goes for Vanity Fair. However, the willingness of Condé to shutter a signature title like Gourmet and put into question the position of a bold-faced editor such a Reichl must certainly be seen as a warning shot across the corner -office bow of both Wintour and Carter. No one, apparently, is indispensable in the eyes of McKinsey.