I’m happy and tired, just back from attending this conference. I’ve been going to International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conferences for around 10 years. Every year I know more people, and much hugging and kissing and laughter ensues.

There are the  people I only seem to see at this event. There are the people I want to get to know better, including book editors, magazine editors, and  authors. There are the new friends I’m thrilled to see again. There’s the Bay Area contingency, always large. And for the first time, there are the people I’ve got to know here on the blog and on social media. Put them all together and it’s an ever-expanding party, with tons of networking. And I get to learn more about our profession of food writing, in sessions ranging from book proposals to magazine pitching to new media.

And eating? Did I mention eating? This year’s conference was held in a total foodie town filled with food carts and artisan foods, an almost religious preoccupation with the new, the trendy, and the sustainable. Particularly, I can’t stop thinking about the sustainable pastrami sandwich at Kenny & Zuke’s, an ice-cold foie gras pop at a reception, and a maple bacon bar from Voodoo Donuts, shared in a Prius on a rainy early evening.

My job was to conduct two “Experts are In” sessions on “Staying Ahead of the Curve” and two “Night Owl” sessions for food writers on the topic of reinvention. I love coaching and facilitating discussions, so I hope the attendees got as much out of the sessions as I did.

I’m missing the buzz and the energy from being around so many talented people. Some of the highlights:

• A keynote address by former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl, the “most famous unemployed food writer in America” according to New York Times food reporter Kim Severesen. Reichl described why the magazine closed and what she took away from being the editor there for 10 years. Michael Ruhlman reports on it here.
• The annual awards gala, held in an Art Deco auditorium with a live band, and hosted by Reichl and Seversen, friends with a “butch/femme prom-queen kind of vibe” according to a tweet by Joe Yonan, the Washington Post’s food editor. See the list of winners here. I was honored to accept my friend David Leite‘s award for best first book, The New Portuguese Table.
• A long social media session with a panel that included my new pals from Club Med, the super-accomplished Jaden Hair (almost 50,000 followers on Twitter!) and Elise Bauer (8 million page views per month on Simply Recipes!).
• A gorgeous reception on opening night, featuring the best food and spirits providers in Portland. Watch a short video here.

If you’re a food writer or blogger, plan to join us in Austin next year, June 1-4.

Were you there? Drop me a line and tell me what you enjoyed best.

You might have read in my last post on James Beard nominees that Alan Richman, a contributing writer for GQ magazine since 1986, received three nomations.

That’s nothing. His bio on GQ calls him “the most decorated food writer in America.” He has already won 14 James Beard awards, with 29 nominations overall. A congratulatory post from the GQ editors compared him to Meryl Streep, who has won twice, with  16 nominations.

Richman, who started his writing career as a sports reporter in Philadelphia, eats in restaurants as his main job. In one year he might dine in Bangkok; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Paris; Beijing; Los Angeles; and New Haven, Connecticut.

He’s a master of the long form, but it must be relative. In an interview with Chow, Richman bemoans its demise.”We’re starting to lose something by stories getting so short,” he said. “I fully understand you can no longer write 10,000 words. Those days are over, and they probably should be.

“But as magazines more and more are turning to the 2,000-word story at the maximum, you lose the sense of adventure and expansiveness. A great story can sweep you away. A great short story can amuse you, but it can’t sweep you away.”

If you’d like to be swept away, read his three stories nominated this year, and see what you can learn from them:

“American Pie,” GQ, June 2009.  “Richman traveled more than 20,000 miles across the U.S.A.—the country that makes it best—in a search for the 25 best pizzas.” (How many of us can do that for freelancer pay? The ambitious complexity and length of the assignment floors me.)

“Hillbilly Truffle,” GQ, September 2009. “…What happens when—sacrée merde!—an obsessed Yankee learns to grow black truffles in the scrub woods of Davy Crockett’s Tennessee?” (Ferocious research and analysis of black truffles’ history and appeal.)

“Le Petit Gourmet,”GQ, March 2009. “Between math class, student council, and swim-team practice, 12-year-old David Fishman pursues his true passion: writing reviews of some of New York’s most important restaurants.” (You’ll laugh your head off at his long lead, written in classic Jewish shtick.)

You’ll notice how much work he pours into each story, his whip-smarts, and how his personality comes through. How would he describe his voice? Here’s what he said when I interviewed him for Will Write for Food: “I’m a diffident, cranky, New York guy who walks into a restaurant and waits to see how he’s going to be abused. I’m a passive-agressive guy who gets the last word. I am someone to whom things happen. Writers should take a a passive role so readers feel represented.”

He didn’t say anything about being hilarious, intensely passionate about  whatever the topic happens to be, and opinionated. “Buffalo mozzarella” he sniffs in American Pie, “is pizza’s second-worst topping, exceeded only by whole anchovies—no hot, smelly fish on my pies, thank you.” 

If you’re lucky enough to live in New York (and you’re loaded), you could take his class at the French Culinary Institute ($1,050), where he is the Dean of Food Journalism. When asked what he teaches, he explained to Chow:

“There are three stages to food writing. There is the planning, which takes an enormous amount of time to do well—so many phone calls, so many people to talk to, so many reservations. There is the writing, which is hard. You have to create your own story; there’s no automatic story, no natural outline. The third part is the traveling and the eating. And that’s really easy. There’s a lot that’s hard about preparing, about writing, but covering food and travel is about as good a job as you can have.”

Now that you know a little more about Richman, do you think it’s possible to get writing gigs like this today? Is he part of an increasingly rarefied group of writers that will not be replaced, or can we hope to hear more from a new generation?

Today the James Beard Association announced its finalists for the annual awards. I’m particularly interested in the Journalism Awards category: who the authors are and what they wrote. 

The first thing I noticed is that most of the nominees are white men. They are full-time writers, reporters or editors at their publications. A few are freelance writers and long-time contributers to their publications. Some have already won awards. Some are book authors. Almost all seem based in the mid-west or the East Coast.

The few freelance writers nominated have a relationship with their publication. Translation: They didn’t write one piece for a magazine once.

Now, you can see the list of nominees on many other websites, but  so far I haven’t found any sites offering links to  the actual articles. It took me a couple of hours, and I didn’t find them all. But in service to you, who might wonder if you could ever write an award-winning article, here are 17 of the nominated pieces, and a little about who wrote them. ( Go here for a complete list.) 

I hope you’ll take  time and read some of these articles. One thing you’ll notice about them: they’re long. You might also wonder  what makes these pieces good enough to be nominated for a Beard award. Is it about their cleverness? Depth of researcher?  Depth of culinary knowledge? Unique point of view? Knowing how to cover a story? Finding a trendy topic?  

Read a few. I’d love to know your opinion. 

Magazine Feature Writing about Restaurants And/Or Chef

American Pie, GQ. Alan Richman, contributing editor and previous winner
Soul of a City, Saveur. Anya Von Bremzen, author and contributing editor to Travel & Leisure
The Last Chinese Barbecue, Gourmet. Frances Lam, contributing editor

Magazine Feature Writing With Recipes

The Wonders of Ham, Saveur. Dana Bowen, executive editor
The Beauty of the Beast, Men’s Health. Matt Goulding, food and nutrition editor

Magazine Feature Writing Without Recipes

Hillbilly Truffle, GQ. Alan Richman, contributing editor and previous winner
The Price of Tomatoes, Gourmet. Barry Estabrook, contributing editor
The Taste Makers, The New Yorker. Raffi Khatchadourian, staff writer

MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award

Le Petit Gourmet, GQ. Alan Richman, contributing editor and previous winner
Faith and Bacon, Saveur. By Francine Prose, author of bestselling fiction

Best Newspaper Feature Writing

The Real American Pie, Chicago Reader. Cliff Doerksen, freelancer (usually a movie critic)
The Charcuterie Underground, Chicago Reader. Mike Sula, staff writer

Newspaper Feature Writing about Restaurants and/or Chefs

How Not to Hire a Chef, Washington City Paper. Tim Carman, staff writer

Reporting on Health, Environment or Nutrition

Nachos for Lunch? Yes, Every Day, Chicago Tribune. Monica Eng, Tribune reporter
Throwing Out the Wheat, Slate. Daniel Engber, Slate senior editor
…Or Not to Bee, Eating Well. Rowan Jacobsen, author of  two books.

(Also: The only individual nominated for a food blog is Hank Shaw, also nominated last year, for Hunter, Gardener, Angler, Cook. He is a former newspaper reporter.) 

The postcard inside the plastic-wrapped package advised “…we will be sending you Bon Appetit for the duration of your remaining Gourmet subscription term.”

And there it was, my non-Gourmet. First I got sad about Gourmet’s passing all over again. I like the way Elissa Altman summed up its demise: “Gourmet folded because it had a direct competitor under the same roof in the same genre geared to more practical and commercial endeavors, it made more money, and one of them had to go…End of discussion.”

Once I got over the fact that it was not Gourmet, I was curious to see how Bon Appetit was different. Content, for one thing. Bon Appetit is all about entertaining. Tone, for another. It’s all about ease: world-class dining made simple.

Yet most of the recipes didn’t look that easy. In fact, I got the biggest laugh from a cover blurb promising “5 Easy Ways to Eat More Veggies.” The number one way? Cook cardoons.  

(If you’re wondering what they are, it’s probably because your grocery store has never sold them and you’ve never seen them before. Here’s a technique piece in Saveur, which described cardoons as “high maintenance.”)

On behalf of freelance food writers everywhere, I examined the March issue’s contributors, and found a mix of mostly veteran food writers, with one or two youngsters:

• Cookbook author Molly Stevens wrote the cover story on 1-pot wonders
• Coi chef Daniel Patterson penned a recipe story based on restaurant dishes
• Brat Pack actor Andrew McCarthy (the wild card) wrote a piece on Irish soda bread 
• Filmmaker  and new cookbook author Tamra Davis supplied recipes for vegetarian kids
• Diane Chang wrote a lovely essay about her grandmother’s cooking, with a portrait of the two of them as a full-page photo
• Carolynn Careno, a freelance food writer and cookbook co-author, recreated an Idaho cabin dinner
• Molly Wizenberg of Orangette wrote her monthly column, a pleasure to read.

And you know what’s really strange? If you want to read any of these pieces, click on the website’s magazine section to access close to the entire issue’s content.

I couldn’t find any pieces about food policy or farming, or essays as brilliant as “Consider the Lobster.” Bon Appetit is much less lofty and aspirational. But then, Ruth Reichl is not in charge. On the other hand, it publishes younger writers, even a blogger. I don’t think Gourmet was ever going to acknowledge food bloggers. It was run by snobby old-school journalists. Let’s be honest. 

I’m sure I’ll come around. Right now, I need reasons to fall in love with Bon Appetit. If you have some, let me know.

For more reading on differences between Bon Appetit and Gourmet:

• BookSlut’s smackdown: Gourmet vs. Bon Appetit cookbooks
• The Wall St. Journal‘s side-by-side comparison of the two magazines, by the numbers

Maybe the magazine editor was just talking off the top of her head, but when I read it, steam came out of my ears. 

In a story in the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ newsletter, by Stephanie Stiavetti, the editorial director of a national food magazine spoke of writing opportunities on her magazine’s website:

 “There’s a lot of fear and concern…the move to user-generated content will impact those who made their living writing for print, but it has also opened up new opportunities for bloggers.”

Oh yes, we know all about that, how links are the new currency, and dwindling opportunities for freelancers. The article continues:

“How much quality can you expect from an uncompensated writer who may not be willing to put a lot of effort into an unpaid gig? ‘A lot,’ says the editor, who plans to use guest bloggers in the future: ‘We’ll be selecting the people we feel have the same level of accuracy and integrity that we would expect from our own writers.’

“The editor believes that (her magazine) has a lot to offer bloggers beyond money. “It’s exposure. Our Web site is one of the top twenty food sites in the world.”

(I’m making her anonymous because I don’t want hate mail directed at her. She’s not the first to say this.)

So the editor wants professional bloggers for the website, but they should work for free because her site gets a lot of hits. Hey, maybe she can apply that logic to the print magazine and stop paying professional writers there too, because her magazine has lots of of subscribers. 

When I emailed the editor about her comments, she said the piece was misleading, that so far the magazine’s website columns are written by staffers. But when I pressed her about pay for freelancers online, she did not respond. Meanwhile, another magazine editor quoted in the story said she paid bloggers less than print writers for original content.

Should bloggers should be paid the same as print writers to create original content? (If so, Steph wrote that Sunset pays the same rate.) 

As Gourmet went down, Saveur went up. According to Eater, Saveur ended 2009 as the second highest magazine for ad page growth among all monthly mags. Its December issue was up 32 percent in ad pages, according to publisher Merri Lee Kingsly.

Impressive. Too bad she hasn’t raised the editorial budget in response. Instead, the editors have been working their tails off.

For the December issue, Executive Editor Dana Bowen wrote the 20-page cover story, including recipes and all but one sidebar, a feat that must have taken several months in addition to her full-time job.

In the same issue, Executive Food Editor Todd Coleman went to India to pen a feature on India’s Gujarati cuisine, weighing in at a roaring 16 pages. James Oseland, the Editor-In-Chief, accompanied him as the photographer! 

So how much of the book did these stories take up? In the magazine layout world, the “well” is the area between the columns and departments in the front and back of the book. It’s where the big juicy feature articles live, and where all freelance writers aspire to be published. The number of ads determine its size.

Before I give you the answer, I’ve got to hand it to the editors for their ingenuity and hard work. They made the best of what must be a puny editorial budget. It’s satisfying to write big features for your own magazine. And to be a decent photographer when you’re the editor-in-chief is a huge accomplishment. 

On the other hand, I did a little math. Combined, in-house editors produced 36 pages of the magazine’s 46-page feature well. That means they paid nothing but expenses for around 78 percent of the feature content, leaving just a few pages for contributors. So much for all that growth.

* * *

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Earlier this year I began working with a sophisticated home cook and sometime cooking teacher who wanted to start a blog, write for publication, and later on, write a cookbook. That wasn’t the order, but I told her it would work best that way.

She launched the food blog, and it’s coming along beautifully. For clips, we brainstormed a few story ideas for newspapers, which would produce results much faster  than magazines. She pitched several weeklies in the state, with two responses. It wasn’t pretty. Here is the first, from the paper’s editor:

“All the articles are volunteered.  We have no budget for freelance, or for anything else that matter. Everybody does it here for love. Still, we recognize that many freelancers who query us are hoping–and needing–to sell their articles.  If that is the situation with you, of course we will understand your not being able to place it with us. If on the other hand, you are in a position to donate the piece, it would be our pleasure to run it.”

Around the same time, a second reply arrived. It came from another paper’s copy editor (in the past, a copy editor would be way too junior to respond to story pitches, but this is today’s economy). It said, “This story sounds fun…  However, we are a struggling paper (as most are) and would have to know how much you would want for the story before we say yes or no.”

Oh wonderful. She would have to guess how much the paper would pay. And if she guessed wrong? Still, I suggested she go with the second paper, because at least they were willing to pay something. I’m not a big fan of working for free. I suggested she ask for $100 for up to 500 words and two recipes. She went along with it, except she suggested up to four recipes. Then she got the reply:

“Unfortunately, we are a very small paper dealing with intense budget cuts (most of our newsroom is out on furlough today). We can’t afford to pay freelancers $100, we usually pay around $50 for a 700-word story. Thanks so much for your offer, good luck with the story!

Great. $50 for 700 words. You know what that is? It’s 14 cents per word, for probably 6 hours of work. And to top if off, the copy editor blew off the writer because she didn’t guess the right amount.

Unperturbed, the writer went back to the first paper. She’s submitting a 500-word article with 1 recipe. “If people want more recipes, they can go to my blog,” she concluded. Now, this writer can afford to submit a piece for nothing. She wants a clip. After she told the editor she was “in a position to donate it,” he said, “I’m looking forward to your first one.” He can already see that she’s good, and he wants more. For free, of course.

So dear reader, we can all agree that this situation stinks. But let’s discuss. Is she on a slippery slope? Should she have agreed to write for free? Should she continue to work for this guy for nothing, to build up her clip file? Or should move on, looking for payment for her hard work? Is $50 much better than free? What a time we live in.

(Thanks to Nancy Leson for the idea for this headline.)

There’s a new idea in publishing: link, don’t pay. If a company wants your online content, they just link to it. That way, it’s argued, even though you don’t get a check for supplying editorial, you get a bump in traffic.

And isn’t that what we all want? More traffic?

Well yes. More traffic makes us feel superior when we see rising numbers of unique visitors. It leads to more income from ads, and potentially, more links. But more traffic alone doesn’t pay the mortgage.

One of my students mentioned talking to the Meredith Corporation about providing content to a new site. They want to download the entire content of her blog, and all they’ll give her is a link. She was struggling with whether to agree. Is it worth it? Why would anyone go to her blog if it’s all on Meredith’s site?

The New York Times launched a Bay Area website, and listed several excellent food blogs in its Eating & Drinking blogroll. Everybody wins, it seems, except for the freelancer who could have created original content. The paper lowered its budget, the bloggers are honored and thrilled by the bump in traffic, and the readers — well, they click through to the blogs, where the content lives, as sanctioned by the Times.

Even the famous writers are settling for links instead of cash. Epicurious announced last week it will feature content (read: recipes) from the cookbooks of famous chefs and personalities like Jacques Pepin and Lidia Bastianich. Being a smarty-pants Communist (a former boss’s term of endearment), I emailed the p.r. person at Epicurious to find out how these big-time authors will be paid.

Surprise! They will not. Instead, Epicurious provides an Amazon link to the book in which their recipe appears. “We believe this will drive sales for the authors,” she said. I guess Random House convinced these famous authors to think of recipes as advertising tools instead of editorial content.

Well, call me nostalgic. I remember the days when writers got paid to write website content, or paid to have content reproduced elsewhere. Is that a quaint idea now?

Honey and apples signify sweetness for the year ahead

It was the Jewish New Year this weekend, one of two opportunities for Jewish food writers to freelance articles about the holiday. Newspapers only cover Jewish food twice a year: on Passover in the spring, and on Rosh Hashana in the fall. It’s kind of like specializing in stories on turkey, and therefore you can only be published on Thanksgiving. Does this make sense? No, but welcome to Jewish food writing.

And just like Thanksgiving, each year, food writers have to come up with something new. The distinguished Joan Nathan, America’s best known cookbook author on the subject,  dutifully found an unusual angle for the New York Times last week: how actors in New Hampshire recreate early settlers’ celebration of Rosh Hashana. At the Washington Post, freelancer David Hagedorn told how to stuff a beef brisket and smoke it on a grill, rather than merely baking it in the oven. Mary MacVean, a staffer at the Los Angeles Times, suggested a Tunisian menu.

None of their suggestions worked for me. I held my first Rosh Hashana dinner in probably 20 years, and made brisket in the oven for my Ashkinazi (Eastern European) in-laws and guests. Even though I’m a Mizrahi Jew — my Iraqi parents came from China — I wasn’t going to fight American tradition and their expectations. (I did, however, rebel a little with a fabulous roasted butternut squash, pomegranate and walnut salad from Amelia Saltsman.)

It’s the same dilemma we all face when planning menus for holidays: how much to hew to tradition, how much to experiment. But no matter which meal it is, the bottom line is that Jewish cooking is only newsworthy when the holidays approach, and editors scratch their heads each year to come up with a story that is not the same-old same-old.  I played the game too when I  was a magazine editor. It’s just  not that much fun on the other side. Writers who specialize in Jewish food can ply their craft all they want on blogs and in Jewish publications and websites. But in newspapers (and general magazines too), there’s no compelling reason to cover it most of the year.

L’Shanah Tovah to my Jewish  friends. May you have a year filled with sweetness and joy, and may you do as many good deeds as there are seeds in a pomegranate.

Julia Allenby, a student in my food writing class, just pitched Saveur magazine and got this email from the editorial assistant. Finding the right editor is a critical part of pitching as a freelance writer, and usually it’s hard to find the right info. Here it is. Don’t forget to replace the [at] with an @.

“Although we don’t have any formal writers’ guidelines for Saveur, we generally offer the following suggestions. Queries and stories should be detailed and specific, and personal ties to the subject matter are important—let us know why you should be the one to write the story. Familiarize yourself with our departments and the magazine style as a whole, and pitch your stories accordingly. We suggest that prospective writers read at least a year’s worth of issues.

Please send your brief queries and any clips that you wish to include, preferably by
e-mail, to the appropriate individual(s), as noted below. By e-mail:

Online Content
Katherine Cancila, Associate Editor: Katherine.Cancila[at]bonniercorp.com

Fare
Dana Bowen, Deputy Editor: Dana.Bowen[at]Bonniercorp.com

Book Review, Drink, Classic, Origins, Ingredient, and Reporter
Dana Bowen, Deputy Editor: Dana.Bowen[at]Bonniercorp.com
Dave McAninch, Deputy Editor: Dave.McAninch[at]Bonniercorp.com
Beth Kracklauer, Senior Editor: Beth.Kracklauer[at]Bonniercorp.com

List, Memories, and Lives
Dana Bowen, Deputy Editor: Dana.Bowen[at]Bonniercorp.com
Dave McAninch, Deputy Editor: Dave.McAninch[at]Bonniercorp.com
Beth Kracklauer, Senior Editor: Beth.Kracklauer[at]Bonniercorp.com
Katherine Cancila, Associate Editor: Katherine.Cancila[at]bonniercorp.com

Kitchenwise and Source
Georgia Freedman, Managing Editor: Georgia.Freedman[at]bonniercorp.com
Beth Kracklauer, Senior Editor: Beth.Kracklauer[at]Bonniercorp.com

Cellar
Dave McAninch, Deputy Editor: Dave.McAninch[at]Bonniercorp.com
Beth Kracklauer, Senior Editor: Beth.Kracklauer[at]Bonniercorp.com

Kitchen and recipes
Todd Coleman, Food Editor at Todd.Coleman[at]bonniercorp.com

Features
James Oseland, Editor-in-Chief: James.Oseland[at]bonniercorp.com
Dana Bowen, Deputy Editor: Dana.Bowen[at]Bonniercorp.com
Dave McAninch, Deputy Editor: Dave.McAninch[at]Bonniercorp.com
Beth Kracklauer, Senior Editor: Beth.Kracklauer[at]Bonniercorp.com

If pitching by regular mail, please address your query to the appropriate editor (above) at:

SAVEUR
15 East 32nd Street, 12 Floor
New York, NY 10016

We welcome all submissions but, because of the large quantities we receive, cannot guarantee their return. Saveur assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of unsolicited materials. Please note that we rarely assign restaurant-focused pieces.”