This morning former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl remembered the one-year anniversary of the day her magazine closed. “Foggy, melancholy morning,” she wrote on Twitter. “Gourmet’s end one year today. Fat fluffy pancakes, drizzled maple syrup, crisp smoky Benton’s bacon. Full.”
Last year around this time, Ms. Reichl gave a few interviews to talk about the end of Gourmet. She spoke with Deborah Solomon from The New York Times Magazine:
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.
Ms. Reichl also spoke with The Observer at a party to celebrate Ms. Reichl’s television show, Adventures with Ruth, 10 days after the Gourmet was shuttered. Ms. Reichl lamented the end of the magazine and talked about the “rarefied world” of Condé Nast that always seemed foreign to her (“It’s a life that is probably coming to an end,” she said).
She also forecasted the Gourmet Live iPad app. “I do think that there is going to be something that will be very exciting and that will incorporate video, instant shopping,” Ms. Reichl told The Observer. “I think that the rich experience that is in magazines will likely move to another platform. It won’t be online. It will be what magazines are now, tools for living and inspirational and intellectually rich. I think magazines in that sense won’t be going away.”
Minus a hiccup or two, that is pretty close to what happened with the relaunch of Gourmet on the iPad. Upon hearing about the plans in June Ms. Reichl tweeted “they’re reviving the brand, not the magazine. Pity.”
Ms. Reichl has most recently re-emerged as an editor-at-large for Random House. She will be making deals for food-related books and thinking about the digital future of food writing.
