Sep
19
2007
The latest issue of Edible Portland features a piece on harvesting food in public places. Among the sources is urban edibles, a database of wild food sources in Portland, complete with maps. A little after checking this out, while scanning the Platial blog (Platial is a social mapping site, based right here in Portland. They’ve just given the site a facelift, by the way…) I noticed that a bunch of folks map this stuff. Who’d a thought?
While our minds are wandering…the same EP issue also features a piece on city commissioner Sam Adams’ garden. As all Portlanders know, his name has been all over the press for other reasons this week, but I mention this only because I swear this is the second article on Sam Adams’ garden I’ve read in the last ten days or so. I can’t for the life of me remember the other source. It is an impressive garden and all, but I can’t help getting that too much information feeling.
Your thoughts…
Aug
30
2007
In the Wednesday’s NY Times, Marian Burros wrote about the Edible Communities franchise of local food magazines. The group has editions in more than 30 locales nationwide, each with a focus on local food, particularly local food produced using organic and sustainable practices.
Portland’s version is produced by EcoTrust and is now on its seventh quarterly issue. EDIBLE PORTLAND is available by subscription or free at advertiser locations such as New Seasons.
Unlike many “magazine” give-aways, this one is very well done and worth seeking out. It’s a good idea and follows a workable business model — local content strengthened by a national network of like-minded publications.
A typical editorial challenge in this kind of business is avoiding the temptation to spread content across the network in the interest of editorial efficiency. The EDIBLE franchise rules are set up for this, allowing only 25% non-local content in each edition of the print titles. We had a hard time finding any content in EDIBLE PORTLAND not written by local writers.
In some markets advertising in EDIBLE magazines is booming. In others, the effort is a labor of love. The latest issue of eP contained around a dozen pages of paid ads, roughly $25,000-30,000 in revenue. After expenses, the net is probably half that, before salaries (if anyone takes one). And a percentage of that goes to supporting EcoTrust. You get the sense that a big profit is not the overriding goal here… and that’s part of the beauty of it.