How Eater Lost Its Bite

For those following food media in particular, Eater’s omission felt symbolic, suggesting that the brand simply isn’t as valuable as it once was. As Dylan Byers put it bluntly in Puck, “Eater, The Verge, SB Nation, etcetera—are subscale, post-prime tertiary brands that, frankly, have little purpose in an agentic era.” For the better part of two decades, Eater had been one of the most influential brands in food journalism. Now it was being discussed not as a crown jewel but as one of the assets being left behind.

It’s true that many digital media businesses are struggling, both with the collapse of the display ad market and “Google Zero,” the term for the collapse in search traffic courtesy of Google’s AI summaries (ironically coined by The Verge’s Nilay Patel). The old digital publishing strategy—produce content, capture search traffic, sell ads against it—has quietly stopped working. Eater, among others, was gravely affected by this shift.

But a number of former Eater employees who spoke to Caper tell a parallel story of the road to the publication’s decline, one that’s less about a sea change in the digital landscape, and more one of missed opportunities, identity confusion, and managerial missteps at the publication, with more than one evoking a doleful, almost funereal tone. As one put it, “It’s impossible to talk about Eater now without it feeling like a eulogy.”

Then, on June 18th, Penske Media closed a deal to purchase the Vox castoffs. Eater will now be joining Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and a handful of other media properties under the Penske Media umbrella. 

The Penske acquisition might be a lifeline for Eater, but there is a sense that its glory days have passed. So what happened? And what comes next?