My Latest Northside Column: Where to Go, What to Do and Eat Near the Bay Area

For my latest Common Knowledge column in Northside San Francisco, I talked to Bay Gourmet leader Cathy Curtis about cool places to go, the best foods to eat, neat things to do in the Bay Area hinterlands.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
The Bay Area Fun Belt
By John Zipperer 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, a new Russian term came into vogue: “the near afar.” It referred to those newly independent countries bordering the Russian Federation, at once close by and yet more distant than before because they were no longer part of the same empire. 

In the Bay Area, our “near afar” is a stunning belt of hills, wine country, farms, and small towns that girdles our metropolis, and getting there is quite easy. Knowing how to make the most of your time there can be a challenge, so I turned to an expert. When Cathy Curtis is not busy with her duties as the owner of Curtis Financial Planning, she volunteers at The Commonwealth Club as chair of our Bay Gourmet Forum, and she also leads groups of travelers on day trips and slightly longer visits to exciting destinations in the near afar. I asked Curtis to share with Northside San Francisco readers some tips for finding great local getaways.

Read the entire column

When she's not busy giving financial planning advice, Cathy Curtis enjoys showing people how to enjoy the finer features of the world. Photo by Beth Byrne.

Bon Appétit Gobbles up Gourmet subscribers

Interesting short article on Min Online about how Bon Appétit magazine will absorb the 850,000 subscribers from fellow Condé Nast magazine Gourmet, which recently was canceled. BA will boost its rate base a bit, while still giving advertisers a freebie boost.

The Min article has some good info on Condé Nast's reputation for cannibalizing dead magazine subscribers to get temporary circulation gains.

Condé Nast CEO: No More Magazine Closures

Condé Nast President and CEO Chuck Townsend informed Folio:'s Jason Fell that yesterday's closure of Gourmet, Elegant Bride, Modern Bride, and Cookie are the last Condé Nast titles to fold.

The closures, which came about in the wake of a McKinsey & Co. report commissioned by Condé Nast, were reportedly made because those four titles had less long-term growth possibilities than other titles. (Without knowing the details, I don't know if that means they could be expected to be profitable, just not as profitable as other titles in the Condé stable -- and therefore it's really just a matter of highest and best use of company capital -- or whether the magazines were so unprofitable they were never expected to contribute positively to the bottom line in a consistent manner again. But I don't have Chuck Townsend's e-mail address, and Fell doesn't go into that, so I'll have to remain in the dark.)

Fell's article does have some interesting musing about other Condé Nast titles that are perceived to be weak -- but if Townsend is to be believed, they are going to continue to be published.

Gourmet Readers Go Hungry for More

Condé Nast is one of the big powerhouse magazine publishers in the world, home to GQ, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Glamour, The New Yorker, and many others. As of today, Conde Nast publishes several fewer titles, having given the axe to Cookie, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, and -- in a move that shocked the publishing and the foodie worlds -- Gourmet magazines. The move followed a review of the company by an outside consultant firm, McKinsey.

Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet since 1999, spoke at The Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley just last week, where she talked about some of the major trends in American cooking, such as healthier food and increased international influences.

But Reichl couldn't beat out a different trend in America, that of a precipitous drop in advertising revenue. Not all magazines are primarily supported by ads; some get more of their revenue from newsstand and subscription revenue. But advertising remains the lifeblood of most of the big glossies, and that's Condé Nast's field of play. It publishes magazines filled with high-priced ads from luxury goods and services companies around the world. And until recently, Condé Nast was famous (or infamous among its peers) for never deigning to discount ad space; if you wanted to advertise in its magazines, you paid full price. In return, the magazines were known for their high quality photography, printing, journalism -- and perks, such as limousines for editors. (If you have seen The September Issue, the great new documentary about Vogue Editor Anna Wintour and her top staff, you get the idea.)

The sense I get from looking at the past couple issues of big national glosses (not counting the giant September back-breakers in the fashion niche) is that advertising pages have begun to rebound from their lows of late spring and summer, but it will be some time before publishers are back in the black.

As for Ms. Reichl's future, it's not yet known, though it's still possible her fans will find her within the surviving Gourmet family. According to Advertising Age:

Conde Nast didn't have an answer Monday for the number of jobs that would be lost as a result of the moves, but the titles' mastheads suggest massive cuts are likely. Gourmet alone lists some 100 staffers, although the company will presumably keep some to help run Gourmet's books, TV and recipes activities, which will continue. It wasn't immediately clear whether Ms. Reichl or VP-publisher Nancy Berger Cardone will stay in some capacity or leave the company. Cookie's masthead numbers closer to 75.