Copied from Wikipedia before somebody fixes it (no kidding):
Conde Nast also will close Cookie (a parenting magazine), Modern Bride, and Elegant Bride.
I must say that I’ve been continuing my Gourmet subscription mostly because it carries Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood column. I guess now I’ll have to get by with Bon Appétit.
Anybody read Gourmet?
Oh no! Admittedly I didn’t read it as often as Saveur, but this is very sad news.
If you like Roadfood, the two of them appear each episode on the weekly radio show/podcast The Splendid Table to give their Roadfood recommendations.
From what I can tell, their ad revenue had dropped rather significantly of late.
Since Conde Nast owns both Gourmet & Bon App, this looks like a logical move.
Everybody expected them to close the less venerable Bon Appetit, though.
As a periodicals librarian, I am dreading a spring with two fewer big bridal magazines.
Poor Ruth Reichl; now she’ll have to beg for pâté de foie gras on the street.
Yes, I have a subscription. I’m not sure when my subscription is up, what happens for people who still have time left on their subscription? Now I’ll have to find another food porn mag to take its place.
Really? Considering Bon Appetit’s subscription base is over 30% larger, I’d have thought Gourmet would be the easy choice to get the axe.
A lot of magazine publishers will try to roll the rest of your subscription over into one of their other magazines, typically something suitable. My WAG is that they’ll fill out your subscription with Bon Appetit.
Saveur is pretty awesome for the food porn. Not quite as fancy, but neat articles.
I already get Bon Appétit. The last time I subscribed to a magazine that went under, I was compensated with a magazine I already got. I called the customer service number and was given a list of alternatives. I chose one and was satisfied. They should have something to make you happy.
But Gourmet has been around forever!
Why is this? Because the brides fight over the available copies, and now fewer copies = bigger altercations?
Well, they get ratty, you know? Women hate it when the magazines get ratty. And stolen (although not as big a problem with bridal magazines as other sutff, since they’re HUGE.) And people want variety, even though they really just want to look at the ads and the ads are the same in all of those magazines.
A whopping 68 years, to be precise, which is indeed “forever” when it comes to magazines.
I didn’t subscribe, since subscriptions to American mags are astronomically expensive for Canadians… still, I’d grab a copy from a newsstand from time to time if the cover was appealing or if a recipe inside caught my eye, which was pretty much every 2-3 months.
It’s one of the few magazines I’ve been reading my whole life (well, at least for as long as I’ve been able to read), so I’m really quite sad to see the grand old lady bite the dust. 
IMO, Bon Appetit recipes are poorly tested, and often require substantial tweaking before they’ll work. They’re often less interesting and tend towards the trendy rather than truly adventurous. I guess we can always hope that an influx of recently-dismissed Gourmet staff will help them fix that, though.
I just don’t see the need for Bon Appetit. If you want gourmet, you read Gourmet. If you want a cut above Good Housekeeping, you read Fine Cooking. If you want comfort food you read Taste of Home or similar. There is no need for a slightly sub-Gourmet.
I didn’t see a whole lot of difference b/t the two, and I certainly didn’t see one as below the other. Both have recipes archived on epicurious.com, and all the recipes seem to be geared toward people who are okay cooks. I’ll admit to a bit of snobbery when it comes to cooking magazines, so I’m probably on the ignorant side when it comes down to it. I didn’t get either magazine.
(Just as an FYI, Bon Appetit has been around for over 50 years.)
There’s always Cook’s Illustrated Magazine. (my favorite)
That’s the only one I actually subscribe to, but it’s completely different from all the other ones so you can’t really compare them. No ads, for one thing.
I used to subscribe to it years ago, and then it underwent a big format change. Was that when Ruth Reichl became editor? At any rate, rather than the elegant old-world feel it had always had, it started looking like People magazine with recipes. I canceled my subscription.
Years ago, when Spy Magazine closed, they switched me to some no-name magazine, which folded and then switched again to some G.Q.-type magazine. Hardly the same thing. Got a lot more issues of stuff I didn’t care about.
You could end up with 10 years worth of Guns and Ammo.
Bingo.
It became a travelogue/celebrity chef biography more that a cooking magazine.