where are you on the food blog writers v. food publishers dustup?

[grasswire]

Cooks Illustrated publisher Christopher Kimball stirred up a fuss recently by dissing food bloggers, who retaliated by fussing back.

From Kimball's op-ed in the NYT:

"There is something to be said for the all-powerful editor who would bring things to their readers that the readers didn't know they wanted. Editors like William Shawn at The New Yorker and Ruth Reichl at Gourmet would determine from their expertise what readers should read. The system was controlled by monopolies, and entry was huge. That barrier of entry has been removed."

He also wrote:

"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."

What say you?

[eridani]

1. Not just cooking, but every other field

I think that the cream will rise to the top, regardless.

[Warpy]

2. You're right, damned few blogs are worth bookmarking

and even fewer of those are worth a daily or weekly look.

[NashVegas]

5. Professionals Are Going Away

And we will be left with amateurs who don't want to quit their day jobs, and may or may not lose interest when they tire of getting .02 from Google AdSense in spite of 15k impressions.

[hippywife]

8. Cooking and baking are addicting past times.

They are creative outlets for so many "amateurs" I have a feeling there will be plenty of reliable outlets for advice and recipes.

I don't think the professionals always have all the answers, either. Sometimes I think they do things just for show and not necessarily for taste and/or nutrition. Kinda like the hybrid roses that the pros develop to look nice but have no scent?

We're all amateurs for the most part, and I think we all do some damn excellent work in our kitchens. :hi:

[hippywife]

3. I don't know.

I can go either way on the subject, I guess. There are some food blogs that I do enjoy and have found consistently excellent recipes and info on. And I still enjoy the openness of the internet in being able to retrieve such information and expertise without paying for it. I don't always trust or rely on the info from ATK and Cooks Illustrated because they seem to say little on the topics of local and clean food, as far as I've seen anyway, and those are important issues for me.

[Dora]

4. The shuttering of Gourmet was deserved, IMO.

They were living large. There was a great article (NYT I think) that discussed the luxurious waste at Conde Nast. There are other food publications that are surviving despite (or because of) the economy.

I haven't looked at a copy of the magazine in years, but I suspect it had taken a hit by middle-brow readers turning to publications like Everyday Food (Martha Stewart), and yes, turning to blogs. Gourmet was lovely, but I never could tell if it was a food magazine or a luxury lifestyle magazine.

[hippywife]

7. I was looking at some of the mags

last night in the drug store and even the Martha Steward Real Simple had sections that had absolutely nothing to do with cooking. Not sure if that mag is intended to have more but it was in the cooking section.

[Dora]

11. I think Real Simple is probably lifestyle & household oriented.

I suspect the drug store doesn't discriminate between cooking magazines and those focusing on other domestic concerns.

[EFerrari]

6. As usual, when the predictable money goes away, people beat up on each other.

:(

[TreasonousBastard]

9. I had this discussion years ago in writers' groups, and...

I'm firmly in the experienced editor camp.

As much as many of us would like to think we do, most of us don't have either the time or the expertise to wander through the infinite number of submissions on myriad topics and magically find the best ones. The worth of editors has always been that they can sort through the chaff and deliver the good stuff.

Do they occasionally miss something? Sure, but how much do we miss now that we dig through blogs looking for the good stuff?

The dirty little secret of Gourmet was that hardly anybody read it for the recipes. Martha Stewart and Emeril have known this for years, and the Food Network is just figuring it out.

Gourmet was a lifetsyle magazine. Its purpose was to show us the high end of life, and how much of it we could partake of ourselves, and how much we could just dream of. As with Architectural Digest, we can live vicariously dreaming of the possibilities, with no real hope of living in those mansions, but maybe taking a few tips to make our own humble abodes a bit nicer.

[katkat]

10. I used to love Gourmet

It had wonderful travel writing. Then it degenerated. And as much as I love Martha, MSL mag is content-free.

There are really great blogs out there, sift and ye shall find.