The sexy life of a food writer

Read all about it in “Food Porn” at CJR.

I do the production on our weekly Food section, so any lascivious links about food reporting will be latched upon. OK, the serious part:

And never before has interest in food been as avid or as widespread as it is today. Fifty years ago, for instance, fewer than twenty food magazines were published in the United States. Last year, 145 food magazines, quarterlies, and newsletters were produced in America and, if the circulation that each claims is accurate, a total of 19.7 million people read regularly about food. TV’s Food Network claims that 78 million households subscribe. The number of books about food and wine sold each year continues to climb from the 530 million that Publisher’s Weekly reported were sold in 2000. So the opportunity for food writers today is unprecedented in audience size alone.

The question is this: Will food writers pander to these readers or will they seize the chance to be better journalists?

Unfortunately, recent history ? including my own ? favors the former. In general, entertainment, rather than news and consumer education, has been the focus of food stories for nearly a decade. Food porn ? prose and recipes so removed from real life that they cannot be used except as vicarious experience ? has reigned.

Occurs to me right now that it’s odd how we put the least weight, journalistically, on the stuff we need most. Food, housing and clothing are the three things humans must have for survival, yet these are the three subjects shunted to the back of the paper behind all the Serious Issues.