Earlier this year, The Objective published our series on the “reckoning” that happened in food media in 2020, and how it’s impacted food writing as a whole. Sharing food, and food writing, can be a portal to conversations about community — how it’s changing, who gets to be a part of it, and what makes up its fabric. 

That’s the approach that underscores Alan Chazaro’s reporting on food and the people who make it.

The poet, educator, and creator of KQED’s ¡Hella Hungry! sat down with me to talk about what it’s like to come to food writing from a background outside of traditional journalism, how he sees his role as a journalist, and how he’d like to see food writing reorient itself.

Here’s a snippet of our conversation: 

What do you think gets lost when food writing tells stories fixated on the technicalities of dishes themselves instead of the stories of the people who make them?

I'm very sensitive to things like gentrification — or erasure, maybe, is a better word … Erasure is a … broader reality that many people experience, especially when you're looking at immigrant people [and] working class communities. It's easy to forget all of the contexts socially and economically and culturally that can go into something.

When we only look at the food or the restaurant, it kind of just ignores the reality and the context of which these restaurants and places are — maybe they're raising the rent in the area, maybe they're changing the demographic or the vibe of a certain neighborhood that's been a certain way for a while, and making it different for the people that have lived there without considering those ripple effects.

I'm somebody that went to school for sociology and Chicano studies and poetry … so when I enter a story, I'm looking for those sorts of implications. Even if I'm not writing about those things directly — I don't necessarily want to be didactic in every piece, and be like, “Hey, gentrification sucks, and people are getting erased” … I can be very hyper-specific about the people I do choose to profile.

How would you like to see other organizations supporting and encouraging food writing that goes beyond clickbait or the typical formula of what food writing could look like?

Giving opportunities to non-traditional voices, like myself, and like many other people that I know that could tell amazing stories about the places that we live in, but because they don’t have those credentials, or those pathways, they’re not a part of the conversation.

Obviously, there’s the larger societal realities of people having pathways into journalism to begin with … and all of these complex sorts of infrastructures need to be in place for somebody to even be in a position to be like, “Hey, I want to be a journalist.” … I started in community college, and I almost dropped out of high school, and I didn’t even know what journalism was for, like, most of my life.

It takes a certain institution to be like, “Okay, this kid has no experience, really. But he’s from the place he’s writing about, and he represents a demographic that we have very little of in the newsroom, which is being Mexican American, in a region of California that has hella Mexican Americans, right?”

You kind of have to give credit to the organizations like KQED that acknowledge all of those things as part of my package as a journalist and gave me the ball, saying, like, “Hey, you can play on this team.” … An important piece here is that “the institution” that I work for really empowers me, as a [worker at a] public media outlet, to tell these stories, and to take my time and to really let the stories be written in a way that’s authentic to me and to the subject.

I’ve freelanced for many publications, and there are often editors that are rushing something, or they don’t quite see what I’m trying to capture in a story, so they might be forcing something or trying to stir up some spice or drama that isn’t there in a way. I’m like, “Dude, this is just a story about somebody making muffins in their house, I don’t know what to tell you.” 

I think that also has to be a part of the equation. It’s not just a writer, being from somewhere or caring deeply about a group of people, it’s also the writer having those intentions and then the organization also having those intentions and those two things aligning, which sadly in media is kind of rare, in my experience.You can read the full Q&A with Alan here.

—James Salanga 

It's not too late to get our first print magazine, The Reckoning in Food Media! Flip through reported and first-person criticism of food media coverage, along with looks to how food media can improve.

Democracy Day Q&A with the 19th*’s founder Emily Ramshaw: Uyiosa Elegon, one of The Objective’s Democracy Correspondents, sat down with Ramshaw for a wide-ranging Q&A about gender and power in the journalism industry, politics coverage ahead of the 2024 election and more. (The Objective)

“Voice of Asian America” digitized: AsianWeek, which covered Asian American stories from 1979 to 2009, recently completed its Database Project to archive its many issues. The first English-language Asian American paper, it helped give Asian Americans a stake in broader conversations. (AsianWeek)

Texas news continues to be hit hard: DallasNews Corporation, which owns The Dallas Morning News, is looking to cut staff — through offering buyouts — in attempts to increase profitability. They could eliminate up to 40 jobs, or 6% of the workforce, and all departments will be offered buyouts on Oct. 16. The news comes after the Texas Tribune’s first-ever layoffs and the Morning News switching their Spanish-language paper, Al Día, to digital-only. (Poynter)

Donor drop-outs force The City journalists to take pay cuts: Major donors have either reduced or cut their donations for this year, leaving the New York outlet out at least $1.5 million. Instead of layoffs, The City’s management agreed with staff to cut working hours 20% and supplement compensation through the New York State Workshare program, with investigative journalist Tom Robbins resigning to help stave off potential job losses. (Semafor) 

Journalism affinity organizations call for equity in local news funding: The Online News Association, AAJA, the Indigenous Journalists Association, NABJ, NAHJ and OpenNews are among the several organizations behind an open letter calling for new local news funding initiative Press Forward to break the cycle of disproportionate investment in white-led newsrooms and invest in newsrooms whose demographics reflect the communities they serve. (Online News Association) 

($) 10 days until … AccessFest 2023, IRE’s annual virtual-by-design conference formerly known as the DBEI Symposium. Discounts and fellowships are available, and the event will include both trainings focused on equity and investigative reporting panels, such as those found at NICAR.  

10 days until … “Telling Hard Stories”, a roundtable discussion and awards reception with the 2023 Dart Award honorees that will cover best practices on covering violence and tragedy. The in-person ceremony is open to the public at Columbia University and will also be livestreamed.

18 days until … Solutions Journalism 101, a webinar by the Solutions Journalism Network that will cover the basics of solutions journalism and how to incorporate a solutions framework into reporting. 

Looking for a job? Here are a few places to look: INN | ONA | JournalismJobs.com | 10 Jobs and a Dog | NABJ | AAJA | NAHJ | NLGJA | @WritersofColor | MEO Jobs | Freelance Journalist Rates | Source Jobs | Opportunities of the Week ($) | West Coast Media Jobs

How about a style guide? Trans Journalist Association | Diversity Style Guide | Tribal Nations Media Guide | NABJ Style Guide | Disability Language Style Guide | AAJA Guide to Covering Asian Pacific America | NAHJ Cultural Competence Handbook | SPJ Race & Gender Hotline | AMEJA Media Resource Guide | The Press in Prison | The Conscious Style Guide | Reporting on Addiction

Thanks for reading our newsletter, and for your patience with these issues. We appreciate you being here, and we’ll have more for you soon.

This issue is by James Salanga, with edits by Jen Ramos Eisen and Omar Rashad.