When word arrived that Robert Benchley's older brother Edmund had been killed in the Spanish-American War, his mother's first grief-stricken words were: "Why couldn't it have been Robert?"
Similarly, when I heard that Conde Nast was killing Gourmet, my first thought was: Why couldn't it have been Traveler?
Both are high-end magazines, but Gourmet exuded a passion for its subject - food - that Conde Nast Traveler doesn't. Instead of a passion for travel, you get a love of luxury. It is impossible to imagine Jane and Michael Stern traveling the country and reporting for Traveler on down-home inns. (Even though they're as plentiful as diners.)
Gourmet was edited by a writer, Ruth Reichl, and the language (like the dishes it discussed) was something to be savored. Traveler is edited by a translator, Klara Glowczewska, but the writing is dry and more concerned with amenities than it is with atmosphere. (A huge disappointment, considering that Glowczewska was the American translator of Ryszard Kapuscinski.) Space is sometimes given to well-known authors, who upgrade the property, but the majority of stories are bland, unambitious, forgettable rambles along the surface of some attractive place inhabited by people you rarely meet. The perspective is always that of the tourist, never the local.
Both magazines bulge with consumer information, but Gourmet's was something most cooks could use. Traveler's front of the book is filled every month with briefs about expensive and frivolous accessories that seem more geared to advertisers than to actual travelers. Which explains both the magazine's inferiority and - sadly - its survival.
