Newspapers & Cookbooks

Slate posted an article today about the death of cookbooks. I don’t quite buy the author’s premise but we have seen a significant shift in how cookbooks have changed – especially in who writes them.

For many years, the food editors of newspapers (found in the women’s pages) would write and/or edit cookbooks – examples include Jane Nickerson, Dorothee Paulson and Peggy Daum. Jeanne Voltz wrote several cookbooks while at the Miami Herald and then the Los Angeles Times.

Other than the New York Times, few newspapers publish cookbooks anymore. I interviewed cookbook author Jean Anderson a few years ago who said that today, publishers are only interested in cookbooks by celebrity chefs. Another revenue source for newspapers has been lost.

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