Can Gwyneth Really Support Her Own Food Magazine?

Details are hazy — so take this with a grain of her preferred Maldon Sea Salt — but word on the street is, Gwyneth may be getting her own glossy.

It does seem curious that in a time when magazines are tightening belts, Gourmet can’t stay afloat and even the Oprah name can’t guarantee success (see: OWN), a company would take a chance on hard-copy Goop. But, according to the New York Post,

Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow has been remaking herself in recent years as a food expert with strong ties to celebrity chef Mario Batali — and now, according to a reliable source, she is trying to expand her empire outside of the Hollywood realm with a magazine project. One source insisted Hearst — which has a hit on its hands with the Food Network Magazine and which helped turn Oprah Winfrey’s celebrity buzz into O, the Oprah Magazine, now the second most profitable magazine in the entire company after Cosmopolitan, is intrigued.

“It’s a super-secret project,” said one source. Hearst is insisting speculation is not true.
“Beyond her occasionally appearing on our magazine covers, we don’t have any other projects in the works with Gwyneth Paltrow,” said a spokeswoman. Still, she was most recently on last month’s cover of Hearst’s Good Housekeeping, in part to promote her movie “Country Strong.” But in that article and others, she never misses a chance to promote her cooking. Paltrow’s Vogue cover story in August 2010 was entitled “Beauty and the Feast” and was written by Vogue’s food writer, Jeffrey Steingarten.

The one-time macrobiotic — who’s made herself over as an aggressive foodie in recent years — has a cookbook coming out next month which features easy comfort food. We’ll reserve judgment on her culinary acumen until we’ve cooked from it, but let’s hope for her sake it’s not the mix of aspiration and obliviousness that’s made Goop so mockable. I wouldn’t have said Paltrow was a beloved brand — certainly not one worth risking magazine bucks on — but maybe I’m wrong. Only time will tell.