If you want to see what’s working in local news, follow the food. Or the food writers and editors. I haven’t meant to cover them as much as I have. I promise I’m not a wannabe food writer. But I’m realizing that food coverage has a few things that are critical for local news:
- Devoted and growing audiences
- Stories that can’t be told anywhere else
- Accountability journalism
I’ve thought this again and again in the last few years, but after talking to three local food writers and editors about the future of food coverage, I figured it was time to put it all in one place. Here’s why:
Newsrooms have to learn how to grow loyal audiences. This is not about scale. It is about giving people something they can’t get anywhere else, and something they’re willing to pay for through subscriptions, membership, donations or other kinds of support. L.A. Taco is three years into its membership drive and on the verge of sustainability, editor Javier Cabral old me. And at the Miami Herald and The (Charleston, South Carolina) Post and Courier, food coverage drives subscriptions.
These stories can’t be told anywhere else. Food coverage is the best kind of hyperlocal coverage. This team has scattered after the mass layoffs at The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, but their food team transformed itself to respond to their community on digital and told stories about the kinds of places where people really eat, not the kinds of places food critics like to fuss over. Brad A. Johnson at The Orange County Register pivoted with the pandemic to offer COVID Comfort Ratings and help people know what to expect at area restaurants. And Gannett’s American South features the work of food writer Todd Price, who told me in February, “We’re looking for stories that somehow illuminate the region.”
They can be fun, but also the kind of work that changes laws and minds and holds people accountable. In 2016, Laura Reiley looked into the farm to table movement in Tampa Bay and found, instead, a fable. Her project for the Tampa Bay Times, which Poynter owns and with whom I partner on a fellowship project, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2018, then Times-Picayune writer Brett Anderson uncovered sexual harassment by a celebrity chef that Eater called a watershed moment. The food editors I spoke with this week talked about this kind of work, too, how food is a frame but not the whole picture. We don’t just need recipes, The Post and Courier’s Hanna Raskin told me. We need people filing FOIAs.
“Again,” she said, “It’s a lot more than just what you make for dinner.”
Pictured from top left, Javier Cabral, editor of L.A. Taco. (Courtesy: L.A. Taco) Right, Hanna Raskin, food editor and critic at the Post and Courier. (Courtesy: Hanna Raskin) Bottom left, Carlos Frías, food editor at the Miami Herald. (Courtesy: Miami Herald)
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