They say print is dead — and readers of St. Louis’ free food-focused publications would have to agree.
Feast will cease publishing its quarterly print edition in favor of a digital-only magazine. Managing Editor Shannon Weber announced the news this weekend in a post on the publication’s website.
This follows September’s news that rival food magazine Sauce laid off most of its editorial staff and said that the monthly magazine might stop printing after its November issue. Its sister publication, the Riverfront Times, shuttered its print issue earlier in May after being sold to an undisclosed buyer.
Weber ascribes the move at Feast to the changing way that readers consume news.
“Readers – over 70 percent of you, in fact – prefer to get news online rather than in print,” she wrote. “And it’s not just about convenience. Online publications allow faster access to what’s happening around the area and provide the means to expand coverage.”
Feast will go digital only beginning in December and publish monthly themed issues on its website.
Once a monthly print magazine, Feast became quarterly in May 2023, according to the Riverfront Times. Cat Neville founded the magazine in 2010 after co-founding Sauce with Allyson Mace in 1999.
Feast’s owner, Lee Enterprises, has engaged in a series of cost-cutting measures. Last month, the company announced that it would stop printing the St. Louis Post-Dispatch locally and instead outsource that to a press in Columbia, Missouri. In doing so, the paper would be closing its Maryland Heights facility and laying off the 72 workers there.
In September, the Post-Dispatch laid off six newsroom employees.
Weber directed questions from St. Louis Public Radio to a Post-Dispatch spokesperson, who has not responded to a request for comment as of Monday afternoon.
