The Good: Good photography, Decent recipes
The Bad: Addy, Nothing at all groundbreaking
The Basics: Despite having beautiful pictures, Sunset - a magazine about Western living in the United States - is light on content.
When I returned from my annual trip cross-country to Las Vegas for the first time with my new wife, I returned to reviewing magazines with a look at Sunset magazine, with its by-line of "Living In The West." The thing is, as I peruse the July 2009 issue of Sunset, it leads me to wonder yet again if the magazine might just be an outdated medium. After all, despite the average writing and photography, there is nothing I found in this magazine that cannot easily be found on the internet. That said, it was not the worst magazine I ever read.
Sunset is a monthly publication that is independent (it appears to be owned by its own publisher as opposed to a corporate multinational), glossy and in many ways pointless. Designed to keep those in the American West up-to-date on the state of the West in terms of culture and cuisine, the publication is instead excessively addy and in no way groundbreaking or engaging. For the purpose of my review, I checked out the July 2009 issue of Sunset. That being my standard, the magazine appears to be a 112 page (plus inside and outside covers) publication focused on the Midwest. Or, in my jaded view, advertising to those in the West. Sunset is filled with advertisements and light on content. Out of the 112 pages, forty full pages are advertisements and while that might not seem bad, some of the advertisements quite closely mimic the content of the magazine, most notably a multi-page advertisement for Johnsonville sausages which mimics the recipe section of the actual magazine. Most of the advertisements are for companies promoting travel (Subaru, Best Western) or supermarkets that are mostly relegated to the Midwest and West (like Safeway, which we do not have in the Northeastern states).
I found myself perusing the "Northern California Edition" of Sunset and I thought that was strange, though I suppose it is as far west as one can get in the United States. As such, there were several articles on beaches mixed in with information on barbecuing and summer trips. The publication is generally broken down into cover stories and features (mostly focusing on trips, food, and photographs of places in the West) as well as more regular sections covering travel, home & garden and food & drink. For those just discovering Sunset, the magazine closes with its discovery of Facebook. Surprisingly enough, in July 2009, Facebook.com was big news for readers of Sunset. Throughout the magazine, the articles are a mix of photographs and text and the layout is often problematic in that it blends too easily with the advertisements. For example, the first page of the table of contents is photographically and stylistically similar to an advertisement on the page before it and another on the subsequent page; the text is in the photograph, much like an advertisement's is! Similarly, the note from the editor is squeezed onto a page next to a column advertisement and opposite another full page ad, so it is easily lost.
The troublesome nature of the blending of images and text, confusing articles and advertisements, is epitomized by the section "Readers' Big Ideas." This portion of the magazine follows closely on the heels of several pages of advertisements and split-column letters to the magazine gushing about previous articles. The first page of the readers ideas, though is lost in a sea of ads as it follows the same format and photographic sensibilities of much of the rest of the magazine. Passing the cover page to the section, articles are written promoting ideas had by readers about their lifestyle, like the formation of a social network for gardeners online, microbrews, hiking maps and cycling ideas. The problem here is that some of the information - like a column about biking around the west which prominently features rentabikenow.com - is essentially advertisements mimicking content. Ironically, pages 16 and 17 are formatted identically, with a large picture on the top 2/3 of the page (for one, a homeowner, the other an advertisement featuring a woman on a couch) and the lower 1/3 of the page bearing content information on a completely different subject (the "magazine" page about nicknacks and what they are composed of, the advertisement plugging a merlot). The point here is that when pages of information one is paying for by buying the magazine so closely resemble the pages of information where advertisers are trying to sell readers something, the result is seldom clear or remarkable.
The average article in the readers ideas section is a paragraph and the collection of blurbs stretches on for five pages before turning into a similarly formatted "Northern California Weekend" section. Here, the magazine focuses on Oakland's Temescal suburb. Rather than being a cohesive article, though, the writing is presented as almost random paragraphs (individually numbered for no particular reason) each mentioning a different place to eat in Temescal. The addresses of five Temescal restaurants are given along with the type of cuisine that is available at each locale. Given that the average paragraph in this section is only ten lines, these are not the most thorough endorsements of places to eat in Temescal. Moreover, the article does not help steer visitors away from anywhere, relegating the final space in the article instead on how to work off calories from eating at any of the places they recommend (climbing, jogging and cycling, in case one was wondering). Following more places the magazine recommends readers stopping, all in the same digest format for people who have no time for more than one paragraph or no attention span for a continuing narrative, Sunset has more advertisements that mimic their articles.
This is followed by a remarkably similar article on beaches followed by a slightly more in-depth article on home renovations that allowed a Montana couple to make better use of their old barn. Here is where I realized my complaint about the magazine's format was something the editors and publishers realized; after a page of writing, there was a full-page advertisement and at the end of the article's page, there are directions to continue looking for the rest of the article on the page after the advertisement. Readers run from an article into an ad that looks like it could be part of the article and are left needing directions on where to continue reading, even when it is only a page away! Sunset then continues with a first-person testimonial on the benefits of artificial lawns and while the prose in this section was tight and fun, the subject matter was a bit dull to me. After all, reading about grass is kind of like watching grass grow!
A subsequent gardening section, though, takes readers through the gardens of several readers (as one of the staff writers presents them). In this section, three readers' gardens are profiled featuring large photographs as well as writing on how each garden was created and the challenges with making said garden in the environment. Here, readers have the chance to see successful Japanese-style gardens in San Francisco and other uses of limited space to promote gardening and a more open feel in places that are not. This is followed by an article on making a prefab home into a more personal living space. Like the earlier articles, these are plagued by a sense of being only snippets. Instead of containing a coherent narrative, the articles are largely loosely connected paragraphs which are only connected by the same subject.
One of the more cohesive articles in the magazine is an expose on grilling wherein a noted chef - Tyler Florence - teaches people how to barbecue. Here, Florence - credited as a television chef and cookbook author - is working in the wrong medium. Having people who are unable to do basic cooking tasks works well on television where a viewer may see them learn and be corrected. The point of having three people who Tyler shows the proper way to grill is somewhat lost in the print medium. There is no back and forth here and it is not like banter is included or one sees how the corrections are done. Instead, the article is written as a straightforward "how to" with emphasis on correcting incorrect ways the cooks had done things previously.
This is followed by another slightly cohesive article about trips around the West sent in by readers. These include wonderful photographs of unique Western topography and landmarks and the magazine deserves credit for getting many of these. Readers send in their vacation pictures and they are often truly extraordinary. The writing in this section, though, degenerates into little more than a travel plan for those looking to mimic the readers' trips. Again, there are few places recommended, nowhere readers are told to avoid and the helpful things (like finding inexpensive or ethically-derived gasoline) are neglected. This is more a fantasy travel experience as opposed to a practical guide with real nuts and bolts (i.e. "Anyone traveling cross country in a compact car should remember to wear sunscreen in the car as the sun may do a number on your skin, even when the air conditioning is on" - that's from me, as I have just returned from a trip to Las Vegas quite a bit more tanned than I expected to be!).
This section is followed by recipes, this issue focusing mostly on grilled cheese sandwiches and . . . no, wait, only that! The Tillamook recipes that immediately follow are actually an advertising section! But wait, immediately after that, the recipes for canning are an article. This is a real bad magazine in terms of clarity for distinguishing what is and isn't content. After more recipes, there are other advertisements for food products featuring recipes in the ads looking just like the articles!
On the plus side, Sunset features photographs of real people and many taken by the magazine's readers that are of exceptional quality. The down-to-earth feel of the magazine is continued through the photographs which do not strike readers as pictures of anyone other than actual westerners and midwesterners. Seeing men and women with realistic proportions, skin that shows some sense of age and a general sense of reality is a welcome change (especially after seeing billboards coast to coast of Hollywood beautiful people) and Sunset has that.
Still, it is not enough to recommend this very average publication. The writing is simplistic and the subject matter seems more at home on a social networking website than anywhere else. While a subscription might be a value to some, there is just not enough unique content (outside the photography) to justify buying it. Still, as the future looms and magazines look to capitalize on other markets, Sunset seems like it would have great survival potential in the digital medium as an online publication.
For other magazines reviewed by me, please check out my take on:
Collectors News
The New Yorker
Newsweek
5/10
For other book or magazine reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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