Food Network Magazine - (04)April 2020

UNDER

t’s sort of an old magazine-

industry rule that you’re

supposed to keep your cover

to be a surprise to readers, and two, because

you don’t want your competitors to know

what’s coming.

When I was working on the first issue of

this magazine in 2008, I shared a floor with

editors from Seventeen, and they came to me

in a panic one day because the secret winner

of America’s Next Top Model was coming in—

they were worried I’d find out who she was.

Meanwhile, all I could think was, “OMG, get out

of my office before you see my first cover!”

This sounds ridiculous, but we treated some

of our early cover shoots like covert military

operations: We once papered all the windows

in our photo studio because we thought our

December cover idea for holiday candy apples

was so clever, we didn’t want other crafty

editors in the building to see it. It actually

wasn’t so genius—we ended up shooting

cookies instead—and we might have known

this ahead of time if we let a few more people

in on our plans. My former boss Ellen Levine

always believed in getting man-on-the-street

guidance. Once, when we were on a train back

to New York City after a conference, she took

my iPad, opened our “confidential” June cover

and to my horror, poked the guy next to her

to see what he thought. He was a banker, he

told us, but he had lots of opinions about our

hot dogs, and the next day we were back in the

office making changes.

I thought of Ellen a few months ago when

I did the unthinkable: I posted the cover image

for this issue on Instagram for all to see. We

were torn between a lemon pound cake and

a raspberry-swirl one, and we needed some

data, pronto. So I put the two side by side

and asked people to vote, figuring our pound

cake plans didn’t really need to be handled as

classified information. And we had a winner

within minutes: lemon, by a landslide.

WINNER

!

Maile Carpenter

Editor in Chief

@maile__fnmag

editor’s letter

CARPENTER PORTRAIT: TRAVIS HUGGETT. LEMON: GETTY IMAGES.

12 FOOD NETWORK MAGAZINE ●APRIL 2020

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under wraps until the issue hits the

newsstand- one, because you want it

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