Monday, February 16, 2015

The Rise and Fall of Modern Farmer magazine

In depth article at the New Yorker on the conflict between the magazine's founder and chief investor. 

A painful anecdote about the founder throwing a party with chicken on the menu:
Gardner parked by a red barn. In a white room with metal tables, two men in aprons were spraying down chicken carcasses. One of the men asked how many chickens she needed.

“Fifteen people, so I probably need three or four,” she said.

“All I have is frozen chickens,” the man said. “If you can wait, I can get it done in twenty minutes. They’re in there now,” he said, pointing to a room on the other side of a small opening in the wall, like something food might pass through at a restaurant. A bird in the other room squawked, and Gardner flinched. “That’s fresh, that’s real,” she said. “That’s a little real for me. Let me think about this. We really need chicken.”

She walked out to the parking lot and called the chef who was to grill the chickens. “I’m having a crisis, because they haven’t killed the chickens, and he’s going to kill them for me,” she said. “I’m really seriously thinking, Couldn’t we just do pasta?”