Reading about Gastronomy—An approach to Food Contents in New York City’s Newspapers

Abstract

Food and gastronomy are significant ingredients of everyday leisure and lifestyle practices. Food is part of culture and culture is part of the media. The current research analyzes the mediatization of food in legacy media. Drawing from a quantitative approach, the paper reviews food-based contents in New York City’s newspapers. In particular, AM New York, El Diario, Metro, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are studied over a period of 50 days. As a result, a total of 287 articles are analyzed. This research highlights the features of food and gastronomy contents and describes the differences and similarities between traditional newspapers and free dailies. Furthermore, the referent role of The New York Times in communicating food is confirmed.