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Who's in the Video
Dana Cowin is the editor in chief of Food and Wine magazine.  Previously, Ms. Cowin served as the executive editor of Mademoiselle, the managing editor of HG Magazine, and associate editor of Vogue. A recent guest judge[…]
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What sets the trend-spotting, trendsetting magazine apart?

Question: What is Food & Wine?

Dana Cowin: Well at Food & Wine, we pride ourselves on tracking what’s next in the world of food and wine and often that’s switching out phenomenal talents. So we look for the best new Chefs every year, great program where we identify top talent and then bring them into our family and we follow them and we do stories on them because we feel like they are changing what people are going to be eating in the coming years and when you sit down at a table in the restaurant, it's dazzling. So we are always tracking new talent and we are always looking at the way people experience food in their whole life. So it’s great that you might cook great food, but you probably have another passion and what’s the other passion that you have like what is your whole life because Food & Wine even when you are obsessed those of us who love it so much are, you have to do something else, so it might be you are going out on a ski trip and what you are going to do for food or you might be traveling to Russia and what you are going to eat or you might be a snow boarder or you might be –take your pick, you might be interested in art or every time you travel you --- what could you do, you look for shoes. But you're always going to have your Food & Wine. So that’s our perspective, that we're looking at the person who is passion about our subject and their whole life and the way all fits together and giving the readers an inspiring look of how they can eat and drink and make it part of their whole existence.

Question: What goes into an issue?

Dana Cowin: That’s it really fun part of it. So we put together issues sometimes when you are in advance because we always have to think ahead for Christmas for example we are strutting Christmas on Monday and today is March 7th. So we think seasonally, but usually when we plot out an issue we are looking to touch those points in readers lives we want them to be able to find something to cook for dinner that night. We want them to be able to have the world’s best dinner party. We want to inspire them to travel some place with spectacular food, there is always travel and we want their kitchen, their house to look fabulous. There is always on the kitchen. So we have these points we try to hit in every issue and that sort of rounds out the packet with what’s going on today.

So as much as we have this timeless stuff we got to have a great dinner party, but you also really want to know is [inaudible] super food. Is ---- should I be searching out pink bananas? So we tried to answer those really burning questions for readers too.


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