Integrating Food Coverage Throughout the Paper

The panel here featured Teresa Farney of the Colorado Springs Gazette, JoLene Krawczak of the Oregonian and former Atlanta Journal Constitution food editor Susan Puckett. Farney began by speaking about food news moving out of the food section. She collaborated with a metro reporter on a new ethnic grocery store where the other reporter conducted interviews in Spanish.

Susan Puckett said there was an expectation at the AJC of food stories moving out of the section as needed. She worked on a synergy with multimedia and the Web. She worked with online producers and became more nimble, resourceful and open-minded. The staff is now divided into print, online and newsgathering with writers producing stories across platform. Evening Edge aggregates content from dining channel, with quick fixes for busy people getting dinner on the table. A recipe database, which is searchable, is maintained by a staff member. Chefs do video "Dinner Dare" with video of them coming up with a quick dish. This evolved from a chef who became a "biscuit therapist," blogging in response to users' biscuit challenges. There was also a photo gallery, which did well.

Food never goes out of style and survives all economic situations.

Krawczak talked about extending the food brand beyond the paper. Food section moved from one floor down and now share a pod in the newsroom with the political team. The move increased cooperation and reducd poaching. Experiment was to develop a new mag from the food staff. Mix magazine was started by Martha Holmberg, former editor for Fine Cooking. Portland is an innovative food town. Staff did not increase. she has one-part time writer, two part-time editors and a part-timer in the test kitchen. Mag goes to nonsubscribers 30-45 young marrieds without children and singles, about 40,000 households. Publishes six times a year. Been successful. Have 2,000 subscribers, growing at about 200 per issue. Six thousands copies on newsstands. Goes for messy, funky look but sometimes it comes out more beautiful than planned.

Do restaurant trends. Other newsroom staffers want to write for the magazine. Has unified the newsroom. May repurpose reviews into capsules at the back of the book. Friday night dinner party reader throws casual dinner party and it's rewritten and published. It's the most popular feature in the magazine. Originally had to seed, but now people line up to do it. They use mostly staff photographers. There's a big freelance budget for Mix, and now share branding with the paper. Feature on Kitchens, which are a state of mind. Also includes a wine panel. Two other glossty magazines -- Northwest (do restaurant reviews) and Homes and Gardens Northwest (done by newspaper staff). Mix more about food and lifestyle.

Primary advertisers lto fo nontraditional food and drink ad, e.g. new condos, Macy's, wineries and restaurants have little ads.

The mags go to 40,000 people in in different target audiences, plus 5,000 on newsstands. Advertisers can do all three since they reach different audiences. Subscriptions are $10 for six issues $18 for 12 issues. Some readers complain if they know someone who gets it for free. The editor spends half her time on Mix, and is more efficient on the front end of the weekly section.


Mix has new website mixpdx. Ad ratio is 50-50 but she fights for 60-40 and it ends up somewhere in between.

AASFE -AFJ joint session two

Rob King, formerly of the Philadelphia Tribune, now works for espn.com. He presented about job transitions, a subject close to my heart at this moment. He said to cherish these three things -- yourself, your audience (constituents not necessarily readers but friends, family and your social circle), and your promise (what and who you invest in).

He reminded us we were not powerless and showed a picture of the future Palin son-in-law. He also said we were in our new jobs. Your job is changing now and will keep changing. That's fine. Really.

Talk about work/life balancing. He added kids and life changed. Kids taught him about management and audience expectation.

It's not a career, it's a journey. It's going to work out, but you don't know how yet. He showed his list of jobs. He says writers stay open to opportunities, facts, rumors,

King related an anecdote about his son and a fire truck ride to school. The take home message; do anything to please the audience. The newspaper brand is a huge asset. Idiotic decisions are not new to this business.

He posted the ESPN motto and talked about some home examples of creating expectations.

Next move? Out of the comfort zone. Think about community. Remember the "third screen (PDA, Web-enabled phones)." You should try to delight and surprise.

For example, espn.com hired a physical therapist who wrote about injuries impact on fantasy sports. She just renegotiated a three year deal is on TV, radio blogs and elsewhere and generated 36 million page views one Monday.

ESPN has added sites in rugby, cricket and foreign language soccer sites.

Blogging sites for NFL teams using bloggers and local beat writers and also same approach to college conferences. They are told to refer out to sources of video and other content. Make users happy by making the information easy to access and communicate with them. Answer e-mail.

Metrics and market research are important. Page views in the millions, unique visitors same, for mobile product as well as online. Pay attention to this stuff.

With story sharing, focus on quality. You must trust your audience to make you better. Digital options are about sharing control. People want to use your content but want it fit into their lives. Think about duration. The stories don't end.

Use diversity of voices and points of view. Think about alternate delivery systems such as video etc. Think about context as much as content. Also add utilities such as games and timewasters (so to speak). People could do the Masters instead of just reading about it.

AFJ pirates board feature and Sunday editors vessel

The AFJ membership were surprisingly talkative at 7 a.m. as they rode over to the ZaZa hotel in the Museum District to join up with the Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. Caffeine was essential. We introduced ourselves and then Matt Thompson from the Minneapolis Star Tribune talked about user generated content and how to incentivize contributions. Twitter, the microblogging platform, was also discussed, including how to use hash tags (example #afj08) to highlight events. He noted that Twitter has a narrative flow, and users do remixes (or mashups if you're really cutting edge).

Naturally, Power Point was involved. Thompson also notes that having user write captions or having users comment on a particular topic (best cocktail in the Cities, for example). He also talked about service features (best breakfast, downtown lunch) being wikied, that is, users updating and commenting continuously.

He then moved on to the topic of general features, grouped under a heading such as $1,000. 48 Hours. The Twin Cities. What do you do? Winner got $1,000 to enact the weekend. Specialty reporting takes the same approach to niche topics. He recommended wefeelfine.org, an aggregator of emotional states from blogs around the world.

Thompson also offered the idea of a best feature section, which would be the top blog in the area. His awards are taking place in the area of user generated content.

Michael Bauer from the San Francisco Chronicle talked about how that organization is using multimedia. Because they are in a JOA, the sfgate website had different standards for city and suburban restaurant reviews. Bauer worked out an agreement to standardize practices. Bauer blogs and has done so for about 2 1/2 years. he's garnering 150,000 page views a month. The blog made him less of an asshole in the public eye.

They do service, including video of 10 basic cooking techniques, oyster opening and cleaning squid. Also folding egg whites. Resources are not quite there, including a recipe database that could include 20,000 locally generated recipes. He sees newspapers as being able to combat the East Coast-centric quality of the national sites, and highlight the best of the region.

Bauer does a weekly newsletter which does repurpose some print content. Also added virtual tours of the Top 100 restaurant with a 360 degree view of the restaurant. To try to keep list current, removing closings and updating. As a result, tourists e-mail for recommendations. Also do tasting reviews in the Travel section of the site.

Holiday pages are big. They offer a Turkey Training Camp with video. The food and wine content draws 1.2 million page views a month.

When asked how to use print to drive traffic to the website, Thompson said Vitamin is printed weekly and offers meetups and other events to bond with the user community.

AFJ in Houston Day Two recap

First of all, the second day of the conference was nonstop knowledge absorption and bus time. We started at the Omni with a pair of sessions with noted editor Judith Jones (John Updike, Julia Child) talking about the world of cookbook publishing and how the rise of celebrity chef cookbooks is more or less dumbing down the cookbook. For those of you who want to check out more of Jones' wisdom, your humble blogger debuted her Flip video camera and uploaded the 14 segments to AFJ's own YouTube channel. The sound isn't great but it's worth checking out.

After Jones, Marion Nestle, author of Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, gave an enlightening presentation on food safety as it affects our animal companions. The AFJ published a biography from some of Nestle's detractors that made her sound like the scourge of the food industry. She's not. She's woman committed to digging down into the quicksand of research studies, corporate practices and chemical mayhem exacerbated by the emerging free market in the developing world. She also informed the assembled of the existence of a food study and food science library at New York University which is open to the public. Since your blogger lives 12 minutes away by subway, she'll check it out and post about the collection once she gets home to New Jersey.

After Nestle and Jones, we all boarded a bus down to Alvin, home of Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, to visit Rice Tec. The company is famous for its Texmati rice and also for developing different hybrids and seeds. We toured their greenhouses, which lost their roofs during Ike, and saw their labs where they test rice for water absorption, gelatinousness and other properties important to consumers. We ate BBQ before the tour that included Texmati rice and beans as sides.

Then we were off to NASA to check out space food. NASA is located in Clear Lake, which is about 20 minutes north of Galveston. More damage from Ike is evident in this part of town with blue tarps everywhere and broken trees by the road side.

The visit to NASA expanded on much of what Michele Perchonok talked about in the tech food session on Day One. We were shown how some of the food is packaged and how to control liquids in space. A favorite astronaut meal is freeze-dried shrimp cocktail which has something of a kick due to horseradish in the cocktail sauce. There is some sensory impairment in space so food needs to convey tastes.

After that, we bused to Central Market in the Highland Village to check out its stunning array of products. I found out the fish guy was originally from Ivory Coast. I have also run into immigrants from Senegal and other West African countries. I would predict more African food restaurants in Houston in the near future.

After ogling the displays at Central Market, were retired to the Central Market kitchen to sample barbecue from Pizzatola's, beers from the craft brewers St. Arnold and Shiner, local cheeses from Houston Dairymaid and chocolates from Vosges and Paper Bag Chocolate. We talked about and experienced beer and food pairings.

Taste of Houston AFJ Day One

After talk of Texas, Tang and taxation of resources, we needed to eat. So the AFJ attendees sampled food from eight of Houston's best restaurants -- Indika, Reef, Hugo's, Cafe Annie, T'afia and Beavers, Brennan's and The Grove. The best sports of the evening were Judy Walker and Dale Curry of New Orleans, who were very gracious about the blogger's knocking over a flower vase and soaking our table with water. Even more gracious was Addie Broyles of Austin, whose tote bag ended up covered in wine thanks to the chain reaction from the vase. Who could be in a bad mood after such food? The quail and little stuffed doohickeys (this a technical foodie term based on a recent paradigm shift and focus group research) from Indika were dazzling, as was smoked quail on a corn base from the Grove, Brennan's arrayed some tasty Texas cheese with honeycomb mayhew jelly and tasso ham. Robert Del Grande from Cafe Annie offered scallop with polenta and something green and fabulous (recipes will be posted so please excuse the blogger's imprecision). The fried brownie with peanut butter and such was glorious as was the flourless chocolate flan with chipotle, ice cream with a dulce de leche style cream and more chipotle in the syrup. It was an incendiary set of flavors that played well together. Hugo's was the perpetrator. Call them guilty of goodness.

Texas wines from Inwood Estates Vineyards in Dallas and McPherson Cellars were poured. The McPherson Viognier was a stunner, the psychotic teenager of a grape without the nose ring and the scary friends. The McPherson Sangiovese was intriguing but could stand a bit more bottle age to this mind. The Inwood Chardonnay-Palomino blend was light on oak and had some melon and honey notes, but at $79.50 a bottle, the QPR is not too good. The tasting notes will be posted on the AFJ website and I will blog about the wines on my own blog.

Anyway, there's more to come. Please feel free to correct or add comments.

AFJ in Houston Day One Session Three

Thanks to apple retrieval, I missed a little bit of the first part of "The High Price of Food," moderated by Robin Davis of the Columbus Dispatch. Rosalinda Benner, RD/LD, the corporate dietitian for the HEB Grocery Company, said the average family has cut out 70 per cent of its eating out. The store is trying to help the takeout-dependent learn how to cook simple, fast, nutritious meals. HEB stocks its stores in accordance with local demographic patterns, so North San Antonio won't have the same foods as South San Antonio. By eating takeout, people are used to instant gratification, so they must learn to cook and budget. She offered a handout with several tips such as shopping for weekly specials, getting family members to take a team approach to food preparation, saving grocery receipts to track spending, doubling recipes and freezing leftovers, don't take the kids shopping and eat before you go. HEB does community outreach with recipe cards and a seasonal magazine with recipes and advice. She has seen sales of organic food drop in the tight economy.

Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank, offered some sobering statistics about food and income. Lowe income families spend 32 percent of their income on food compared to 11 percent for families of average income. For fuel, the numbers are 11 and 4 percent, respectively. The food bank gets food donated by grocery stores like HEB of their overstock and surplus commodities from the USDA. Restaurants are not a large source of donations since their kitchens are very efficient. However, the Bank through an affiliate does take excess hotel event food. Thanks improved resource shifting learned by FEMA post-Katrina, the Food Bank did well during Ike in Houston, and still sending food to communities south of Houston and Galveston which were harder hit.

Factors affecting food banks (you can check feedingamerica.org to find one locally) are less excess inventory at grocers, fewer surplus commodities (the Houston Food Bank got 2 million less pounds last year than in previous years as farmers reduced production due to falling prices and rising costs).

Brian Anderson, a livestock and dairy economist from Texas A&M, laid out the intricate interplay between oil, corn, ethanol and livestock and dairy prices. Nitrogen fertilizer is derived from natural gas and hay prices are at record highs. All of the commodities futures markets experienced the same rapid devaluation as the stock market. We're just seeing the beginning of the price increases since there's a lag between calving and slaughter of 16-18 months. You will see lower beef prices in the short term, but pork and chicken will rise. Supplies will also be reduced as production costs rise.

The weak dollar has increased exports (Russia is a big market for dark poultry meat). However, corn is used for farm raised fish as feed so the prices will be impacted. Even cheap and reliable turkey will increase in price. If all beef were grass fed, production would decrease by 50 percent (editorial comment: This would be a bad thing?). Also, with research on using other forms of biofuel besides corn-based ethanol (in West Texas getting fuel from algae is being studied) is on the horizon.

As one attendee noted, "I could be squeezing algae for a living." However, there were better things to come

AFJ in Houston Day One Session Two

"The Future of High Tech Foods" was moderated by Nancy Stohs of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Michele Perchonok of NASA shot down a long held misconception that Tang was designed for NASA. It just happened to fit with NASA's needs and is still in use. They need food to be safe, acceptable (no crumbs in the switches) and use resources carefully. Astronauts usually lose muscle and bone density in flight. The space shuttle astronauts used 4 lbs. of food per person a day. The new Orion spacecraft, which will resemble a bigger Apollo capsule with 4-6 astronauts, will only allow for 2.5 lbs. There's no refrigeration in space so the foods must be shelf stable. They use freeze-dried foods, thermostabilized foods and some existing dried foods repackaged in vacuum sealed packaging. The astronauts find the foods are not as flavorful mostly because microgravity reduces smell conveyance. Also, the food is not piping hot. And, the astronauts are congested and swollen, leading to a phenomenon known as "Charlie Brown face." Plus, they are stressed by being away from the familiar. One astronaut never eats mac and cheese at home but craves it in orbit. Water is an issue due to weight and storage but recycling even of urine for longer missions, will become standard. As Perchonok pointed out, "We recycle urine on Earth, it's just someone else's urine."

Gene Lester, a research plant physiologist from the USDA, presented a handout on comparing studies of nutrients of organic vs. conventional foods. Some of the studies he went over in his handout were not statistically significant, and there was only a minor different between the types if the soil profile was comparable. He also talked about additional funding being available from the new Farm Bill for the next five years to research food crops more thoroughly.
Quote of the day: "We know more about outer space than what's going on six inches under the soil where most of our food comes from."

Marcia Walker, vice president technology and microbiology with Fresherized Foods, talked about ultra-high pressure food processing as a way to eliminate pathogens in raw produce. They produce Wholly Guacamole, which has an average shelf life of 30 days compared to chemically stabilized guac of 7-10 days. The pressure is about 100,000 psi compared to 60,000 psi at the deepest depths of the ocean. The machinery costs about $1.8 million and can process 215 liters per batch. There's a new, larger machine that can hold 350 liters. The capacity depends on the packaging. Hormel is using the technology for sliced deli-style meats and it's shown some promise with salsa.

This was a fascinating session and it was nice not to hear anything about molecular gastronomy. Any other attendees who remember more about the Q&A feel free to comment. I really needed an apple.