Cooking Light taps Hunter Lewis as editor

Time Inc. is turning the tables at Cooking Light, one of the top entrees of US food magazines.

Hunter Lewis, a disciple of celebrity chef Jonathan Waxman and executive editor of sister title Southern Living, will succeed Scott Mowbray, 55, a Time Inc. veteran of 17 years who had the editor-in-chief title for six years. Lewis will start Sept. 22.

“This is a dream job,” Lewis said. “It marries my two passions, cooking and magazine-making.”

The 36-year-old started in journalism at the Herald Sun in Durham, NC, but changed course when he moved to New York and went to work at Waxman’s hot downtown restaurant, Barbuto, as a line cook.

He eventually went to California’s Sonoma County to help Waxman open a restaurant. When he returned to the Big Apple, he landed a job at Saveur magazine.

“I got to magazines through the kitchen door,” Lewis quipped.

Cooking Light drew 654.7 ad pages through the September issue, down 2 percent from a year ago. Total circulation in the first half was roughly flat at 1,792,824, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

Reached at Birmingham, Ala.-based Cooking Light, Mowbray insisted his departure was voluntary. “I absolutely chose to go at this time,” he said.

Mowbray said he plans to focus on writing. Last year, he won a James Beard Award for “The New Way to Cook Light,” a book he co-authored for Oxmoor House of Alabama.

The departure marks the second major editor change at food mags in the past week. Longtime Saveur Editor-in-Chief James Oseland left after 10 years to become top editor at Rodale’s Organic Life, which plans to launch early next year, in a revamp of 72-year-old Organic Gardening.