Gourmet Gone

Another long term (it lasted from 1940 to 2009) magazine is shutting down at the end of the year. Gourmet magazine will be shut down, publisher Condé Nast said. It is a special interest magazine focusing on gourmet food recipes and travel articles and was a quality publication in writing and photography. These kinds of magazines are among the first to die in this age of declining numbers of both magazines and newspapers here in the U.S.

Popular food shows on television, the competition reading faces from electronic technology and free online sites have eroded Gourmet magazine's advertising revenue and made it a money loser. This is the same formula killing so many of the more "serious' publications while frivolous ones like "People magazine" still sell at a profitable rate. The current age of the mind numbing media is smothering the more substantive ones. Thus, many are willing to read the latest celebrity gossip and fewer stories of depth requiring an exercise of the intellect. The magazine industry is in a difficult position generally speaking, it's losing revenue to online advertising.

Other publications that promote substance over style will also fall and the lower common denominator will rise. We can see how that happened in TV and in the music industry, with quality declining precipitously in favor of trendy, less complicated and challenging art. And few seem to notice or care...