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Photograph by Matthew O'Shea
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The world is not so much watching its wallet these days as it is guarding it. But we all need to eat, we’d love to eat well, and we’d like—in the process—to support our home restaurant scene. Enter this month’s cover story: “Cheap Eats ’09,” another fine feast served up by SLM dining editor George Mahe. What’s your pleasure? Burgers, seafood, or Chinese? Massive helpings or happy-hour bites? It’s all here—in our pages, and on a block near you—for a very modest taking.
Modesty’s a key word in areas well beyond food, and the monthly purchases we make—magazine subscriptions, a new summer shirt—need to justify their value more than ever. We recognize this at SLM, and indeed, the staff has been more charged than ever to deliver something truly valuable in exchange for the cover price you pay.
So what are you getting for your money? In a word: care. When we publish a profile on a legendary artist like the late Ernest Trova, as we did in April, it’s the result of more than 50 hours of reporting and interviews by one of the city’s most respected journalists. The products you see in each issue’s “Things We Love” are handpicked by our style editor as she tours two dozen local shops every month. And each issue’s “SLM Calendar” is miles from a copy-and-paste job; our plugged-in culture editor spends a full week researching musicians and exhibits and plays, talking with arts administrators to create original previews of what’s happening at more than 80 of St. Louis’ most significant institutions. Combine this editorial work with our design team’s efforts—including commissioning work from some of the finest photographers in St. Louis—and each issue arrives about as complete as we can make it.
Why share all this now? Not just to reaffirm our value as a useful and thoughtfully presented source of content, at a time when we’re bombarded with information all day and from all sides. (“Information overload” now sounds like an understatement.) But also because I think we all appreciate something more having learned a few details of its making—be it a magazine issue, a bottle of Bordeaux, or even, to return on topic, the unbelievably great pizza in “Cheap Eats.”
Stephen Schenkenberg
