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I chose the current issue of a new magazine (the second issue of Lucky Peach) that was introduced at a changing time in publishing. According to the editors’ note in the current issue: “We came up with this magazine without giving much through to how we’d sustain it.” They increased the cover price from $10 to $12. Six ads were added in the second issue: such as appliance company Breville. The raising of the price and the addition of advertising show the need to conform to a typical business model to stay in publication. My issue of the magazine was purchased at a grocery store so there is an effort at mainstream distribution. The magazine is published on high-quality paper – much nicer than you would typically find in a popular magazine.
The target audience of this magazine feels like someone who is educated (based on topics and vocabulary level) and someone who is a “foodie” who would reject the
In terms of tone, these writers and editors use a tongue-in-cheek style. For example, on the cover, the word “vandalize” is crossed out and replaced with “decorate” as the verb for using stickers on fruit and the reader is also urged to “kill fish” and “eat cookies.” An error in a recipe from the first issue “memorialized” in a cartoon in the second issue rather than a simple correction. (The original recipe called for 4 tablespoons rather than 4 teaspoons of baking soda.)
On the other hand, there were some of usual pitfalls of mainstream magazines. Of the blurbs on the cover was: “A sexxxy (sic) drink recipe that’ll blow his mind.” It’s the same message that you can find most months on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. Also, the dominance of male over female chefs is represented on the cover of the magazine: there is one female chef named compared to four male chefs.
The featured topics make the publication feel like an independent magazine. There are not the typical topics that are found in a Fall/Winter issue such as features about Thanksgiving or Christmas meals. Instead, there is a description about a gathering for Kyudo (Japanese archery) festival held in Kyoto each year (pg 7) and an ode to “My Beautiful Dry-Aged Steak” with the byline of “You.” (pg 126) Recipes were unique, too, ranging from corn cookies and Arnold Palmer Cake to microwave sponge cake. From the reading, “Democracy v Distinction,” the writer noted: “Gourmet food writers appear to view introducing their audience to unknown ingredients and dishes as essential to their work” (pg 189). In Lucky Peach, there seems to be an attempt to try unique dishes but less likely to be ingredients strange to the reader. There is better journalism in this publication than what is found in many food magazines that are often filled with brief, under-reported content.
This is a magazine filled with line drawings and what I would describe as artsy images – a rejection of the overly stylized “food porn” images described earlier in the semester. The first two covers (the first cover is below) hardly feature appetizing food.
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