R.I.P. Cookie Mag

Last week we heard about the abrupt shuttering of Gourmet magazine (after decades in print and despite the amazing Ruth Riechl at the helm), but Conde Nast also closed Cookie - one of our all-time favorite magazines (Twixt used to stock Cookie for sale in the boutique). Daily Babble, a parenting blog, has as one of its lead stories today a rant against Cookie calling it "irrelevant" and chastising it for depicting an unattainable image of motherhood.

Magazines exist in large part to offer an aspirational view of life - be it Vanity Fair, Vogue, or Elle Decor - why should a parenting mag be any different?

Cookie filled a void in the marketplace as a resource for and voice of modern motherhood - it acknowledged that its mom-subscribers worked full-time outside the home and didn't make excuses for it, had lives in addition to (not in spite of or only about) their children, and had varied interests (ranging from travel to cooking to public policy issues). It sponsored community events (Washington DC enjoyed a Gourmet and Cookie Kids' Restaurant Week in June this year), highlighted independent and emerging home and fashion designers/restaurants/hotels (this is actually how we found one of our family's all-time favorite restaurants in DC, Eamonn's), and celebrated family life in general. It didn't speak down to its readers - it understood that we are a more cosmopolitan/urbane lot - and provided an antidote to the often cloying magazines on motherhood (which seem to assume an unending supply of both patience and time on the part of moms).

We had wished that Cookie would expand its coverage to include trends/reporting/research for parents of tweens - not to disappear entirely. It was the rare magazine that just seemed to "get it". Cookie will be greatly missed.

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