Gourmet Magazine Closes

I was listening to MPR the other day and heard a story on Gourmet closing it's doors due to the lack of advertising revenues.
So what if Gourmet closes?  Can't we let the magazine die?
I can't honestly say I ever read the magazine, but its significance is undeniable.
Let's look back a little at it's history.
Gourmet Magazine started in 1941;
That's before Julia Child, The Food Network, and Gogurt.
 It was the first magazine of it's kind.
At first the covers were hand-drawn illustrations, exhibiting traditional American foods from pancakes to Tex-Mex to turkey stuffing. Recipes appealed to those who enjoyed cooking, who loved food, and who had money.
Now, as the last issue is put on stands, the magazine is perhaps better suited for a traveled audience, keen on the fancy fair from France or other culinary countries. The magazine talks about the culture of eating, the places to eat, and the art of cooking in addition to its many recipes.
But what effect will this really have on Americans?
Let's face it--not much! They've already converted to new forms of comestible chronicles online-- and who wouldn't-- they're free! Even Gourmet's publisher Conde Nast (who also owns The New Yorker, Vogue, and Wired)  updates a website (www.epicurious.com) with recipes directly copied from it's monthly.
Yet, isn't this something to be lamented?  In my opinion the interest in food, I mean real food, not just fast food, synthetic cereal, and corn-fed cows, has already diminished enough that less than one third of American families prepare their evening meal from scratch, according to the Institute of Food Technologies (2007).
The number in 2007 had already decreased from the previous year... I can't imagine the percentage now.
And with less and less families eating together at the dinner table, how are children learning to eat? They'll watch the advertisements for junkfood on the television (73% of American's nutritional and food information comes from television, 58% from magazines, and 33% from newspapers according to the IFT in 2002) and believe in the diet fad of the week...They'll accept that the world in increasingly obese and that we're just walking corn.

Not to sound reactionary, but, doesn't the publication of a food magazine, or rather the lack there of, scare people who worry that the art of cooking is now the art of defrosting (the fastest one can, the cheapest one can, and the one with the least rubbery texture)?

However, with 4.5 million unique visitors a month to Epicurious.com, one could argue that the fast and easy location of more recipes than could fit in a bookshelf would encourage cooking in this day and age. Yet with a quick look at the website you'll see it's geared for those looking to make the "simplest" and "quickest" meals possible.

With that many visitors to the website, mass markers have a potential of persuading the public to healthier eating habits or interactive components to more complicated recipe making, but will it head in that direction?

I can only hope so!