I really appreciated the photography

While I have my issues with the latest incarnation of Gourmet, the magazine is an important American culinary touchstone, as important in the culinary firmament as James Beard and Julia Child, and so the decision to cease publication seems very misguided, and horribly wrong. Bean counters, who care nothing about culture (just look at the titles they left untouched).
That said, I am afraid that I was unhappy with the current state of the magazine, and was not going to renew my subscription, which expires this month.
I’ve been reading Gourmet only since the ’80s, but many of the recipes from that time have stayed permanently in my repertoire. It wouldn’t be Christmas without Nick Malgieri’s Swiss Christmas Cookies — this, long before we moved to Switzerland — and the recipes featured in Gourmet have not made it into his cookbooks, so they are precious. And the Viennese Skating Party menu is one that I have knocked off, time and time again. I am a girl from a goulash-making nation, and the goulash soup (easily adapted to goulash proper) is the best, and my standard. I get asked for the recipe over and over.
I really appreciated the photography (the best in the business) and the serious food journalism (say, the piece about tomato farming), but other things often left me cold. (Sorry).
It became too much of an elitist inside-the-industry publication for me to relate to. The menus became something even *I* was intimated from making (I taught myself to make French buttercream at the age of 13, and began knocking off 6 layer tortes with dacquoise shortly thereafter, and started catering my family’s events single-handedly by age 15). I relished shopping for obscure ingredients, but after a point, it became too much to interest even me. The menus required more pots, pans, and commitment than I could muster. My favourite features disappeared — things like Gastronomie Sans Argent. It became more about eating than cooking; the balance was upset. And as someone who has actually travelled the world, has actually lived abroad, I was disappointed by some of the travel writing. A few years ago, I even got so mad as to write an angry letter to Ruth Reichl about a feature on Prague. It was incorrect and betrayed a fundamental lack of understanding and knowledge of the local cuisine to the point that I found it, as a Czech, rather insulting. After that, I was so disappointed in the magazine, that I did not buy another issue of Gourmet until I received it as a replacement subscription (for yet another defunct Condé Nast title). When I received the first issue, I didn’t recognize the magazine any more… Gourmet had left me behind…
But still, this decision on the part of Condé Nast is as bone-headed as they come. Slash the budget at Vogue, marry Bon Appetit to Gourmet, but do not get rid of Gourmet!