Women’s Wear Daily
Fans of the Southern lifestyle magazine include Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin, Sports Illustrated’s Terry McDonell, Time veteran Nancy Gibbs and New York Times food critic Sam Sifton. “I can’t remember whether it was my wife or Karl Rove who told me about it first,” former Newsweek editor and current Random House executive editor Jon Meacham tells Amy Wicks. She writes:
[Garden & Gun] attracts a readership so avid that many of them pay an extra $500 a year just to be a part of its “secret society.” And what do said members receive? A weekend tote bag, a decal and, like an invitation to the lavish wedding of a distant but admired relative, the opportunity to spend another $5,000 to attend an annual weekend retreat with the magazine’s writers, editors and contributors at Blackberry Farm in Tennessee.
Garden & Gun was launched in 2007 by the Charleston Post and Courier parent, then sold two years later to the magazine’s publisher and chairman. The magazine debuted with 19,000 paid subscribers, and in four years has grown to 173,000 paid subscriptions. Last month, it won a National Magazine Award and a James Beard Foundation Award.
