Nothing new under the Tuscan sun: It must have been during the early 1960s when my mother made me accompany her to a Southern Living cooking school session. We sat in the rafters of a 4,000 seat auditorium. I still can’t figure out why she made me go with her. Eating I’m good at, but cooking’s never been my forte. Maybe I was sick and out of school and Southern Living coming to town was too big a deal for her to miss.
Anyway, I thought of that god-awful afternoon when I saw this piece about cooking events being the hot idea in 2003 for Food Magazines.
Can you believe, I mean, dig it? Despite what some naysayers have blogged about Dig-It Magazine in the past, its first issue, a product guide, is hitting the newsstands this week. (Just in time for that busy holiday buying season, no wait, just too late for that busy holiday buying season.) “Let’s show cool people using technology,” is its creative concept. No headquarters or employees is a part of the business model. (No word yet on whether they’re considering other overhead-cutting arrangements.)
Quote from the Boston Globe:
Davis says he wants to use celebrity features to help DigiT do what Maxim did for the then-sedate men’s magazine niche. Though it features an interview with the pianist Herbie Hancock about his use of technology, the first issue is heavy on product reviews and techno-speak, but Davis says the magazine has stories in the works on ways such stars as Sarah Jessica Parker use high-tech devices.
Somehow I think Davis is confused about why Maxim succeeded. According to Maxim’s editor, “The cover (of) Maxim is almost never a shot of Bret Favre looking pensive. It turns out, shock of all shocks, that the most reliable way to catch a guy’s eye quickly is with a sexy girl. To the wandering critic, this apparently translates to lowest-common-denominator. But who cares? It does the job for the reader, and that’s all I care about. ”
(Quick, Mr. Magazine, buy a copy of Dig-It for your collection.)
Wow, publicity for Mr. Magazine: Samir Husni, a name you may have heard before, is profiled in a Mississippi newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger. I only saw the article online, but I’m sure the print version probably got placed above coverage of Trent Lott.
