Tuned In+News Media | October 7, 2009

Gourmet: A Magazine TV Show Sans Magazine

By James Poniewozik

File this under Department of Unfortunate Timing: last week I got a screener in the mail for the public-TV show Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth, a food series with Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl. On Monday, publisher Conde Nast announced that Reichl would have no magazine to edit, as it was closing the venerable food bible.

The show is still scheduled to start airing on October 17. (I’ve made inquiries, to no response, on the future plans for the show, but its maker WGBH still lists it.) Which raises the question—can “Gourmet” continue to exist as a virtual brand, with no actual editorial outlet to back it up?

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | June 3, 2009

Newsweek Joins the Colbert Nation

By James Poniewozik

Because I am just that big a guy, I had to let you know that the competition, Newsweek, has an issue guest-edited by Stephen Colbert on newsstands next Monday. As this New York Observer article notes, guest-edited magazine issues have a mixed history (see the Roseanne issue of the New Yorker), but Colbert’s an incredibly [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | June 24, 2008

EW's List-o-mania

By James Poniewozik

#1 with a bullet. / FOX You might think that the editors of Entertainment Weekly had already devised and published every pop culture special-list issue possible. But you would be wrong. In the current issue, Time’s sister publication unveils what they call the “New Classics”—a label that bravely manages to evoke New Coke and Classic [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | May 8, 2008

TV Poll: What's Your TV Guide?

By James Poniewozik

In the New York Times, the new editors of TV Guide—which looks like it will be up for sale again already—explain why they believe the magazine still matters. It may, but the magazine itself recognized some time ago that if TV Guide matters, it’s not as a guide to TV, as least not as far [...]