Alice Mannette
Alice Mannette blends service journalism with narrative reporting about everyday life, focusing on local food and the places where people gather. She writes for the St. Cloud Times, centering her current coverage on guides to ice cream shops, wineries, and other neighborhood businesses. Her work stands out for the way it turns practical questions - where to eat, what to do this weekend - into detailed portraits of communities and the people who sustain them. Across her recent stories, she combines straightforward recommendations with close attention to local history, culture and public safety.
Local food and drink guides
Mannette’s food coverage is built around concrete, usable guides to local spots. In her summer feature on seven local ice cream shops to try in St. Cloud, she curates a set of options that help readers navigate the city’s dessert scene, framing the piece around seasonal timing and the appeal of specific flavors and locations.
She extends this approach to beverage coverage, profiling Northern Hollow Winery in Foley as it hosts a “Sip and Shop” craft fair that brings together wine, art and shopping in one event.
In that story she looks beyond the tasting room, showing how a winery connects community members with local artists and turns a business into a gathering place. Taken together, these pieces show a reporter who uses food and drink as an entry point into broader stories about local entrepreneurs, weekend plans and the social life of her coverage area.
Community culture and everyday history
Alongside food, Mannette writes features that explore how people record and remember their lives.
In a St. Cloud Times piece credited to her within the USA TODAY Network, she reports on diaries as evidence about daily life and as a personal angle on historical events, tying individual notebooks to larger questions about how history is documented. She extends that interest in the written record to contemporary publishing, covering three new books from Minnesota authors that explore family history and challenge the limits of the historical record.
In that books feature she focuses on how writers use archives, memory and narrative to grapple with gaps in documentation and to reimagine inherited stories. These cultural pieces show her comfort moving from local businesses to literary and historical themes, while keeping the emphasis on ordinary people and the materials they leave behind.
Public safety and civic reporting
Mannette also covers hard-news assignments that touch on infrastructure, safety and accountability. In a story on Sherburne County’s effort to remodel its jail after criticism, she reports on plans by county commissioners to discuss financing, bringing in the institutional context and the timeline for decision-making. Her coverage of the fire marshal’s investigation into a St. Cloud elementary school fire as arson focuses on the status of the inquiry and the implications for families and the school community.
These pieces show her ability to switch from feature writing to straight news, tracking official responses and the practical impact of incidents on residents. The mix of civic stories and lighter features suggests a reporter who can anchor food coverage within a wider understanding of how public decisions and emergencies shape everyday life.
USA TODAY Network service journalism
Beyond the St. Cloud Times, Mannette has bylines within the USA TODAY Network that highlight her service-oriented reporting. In a piece on resources for those affected by the Andover tornado in Kansas, she compiles information for storm victims, including communication hubs and support options, with a credit line linking her work to a USA TODAY Network newspaper in that state. That story is built to be used in a moment of crisis, emphasizing clarity, accessibility and concrete next steps for people who have just experienced a disaster. Her St. Cloud features on diaries and daily life also carry USA TODAY Network attribution, placing her local reporting within a broader national system while keeping the focus on specific communities. Across food guides, culture features, civic stories and disaster resources, her work consistently aims to give readers information they can act on, grounded in attentive reporting on how their neighbors live, work and recover.
4 more food journalists.
Aaron Guerrero
Aaron Guerrero is head of the digital department at Miami’s Community Newspapers, where he pairs restaurant coverage with community-facing content. He focuses on how Miami-area restaurants evolve, celebrate, and experiment through new concepts, menus, and neighborhood-focused dining experiences. He reports on restaurant openings, such as an Italian food hall at Plaza Coral Gables, new executive lunch menus, and wood-fired Latin steakhouse brunches, explaining what sets each venue apart. He also covers awards, like a Wine Spectator honor for an Italian chophouse, and events that turn dining rooms into social hubs. His bylines extend to features on sports-themed gatherings, civic renamings, local visits to restaurant programs, sponsored community pieces, and official notices. His work is straightforward and descriptive, helping readers and local businesses connect around specific openings, promotions, and dining experiences.
Aarron Fleming
Aarron Fleming reports on how courts, jails and public safety systems work over time. He is a reporter at The Daily Memphian covering public safety, the local court system, suburban news and business developments in North Mississippi. His work follows trials, sentencing, appeals, plea deals and judicial decisions, including major cases tied to Tyre Nichols and rapper Young Dolph. He also covers jail conditions, inmate deaths, crime data, prosecution units, trafficking, shootings and public-order incidents. His suburban reporting examines cannabis businesses, restaurant openings and how commercial growth affects communities such as Olive Branch. Fleming previously covered education in the same newsroom. He uses clear, unadorned prose to explain legal steps, deadlines, institutional problems and the political, commercial and community effects of public-safety decisions.
Alana Al-Hatlani
Alana Al-Hatlani is a food writer and editor who treats recipes, restaurants, and food features as ways to explore culture, community, and the business of eating. She works on the food team at Southern Living, overseeing and contributing to print recipes and reported features. Her pastry-focused, restaurant-tested perspective comes from time in restaurant and bakery kitchens. She helps plan and write monthly food packages, including “The South’s Most Treasured Desserts,” and wrote “8 Summer Recipes Our Editors Make Every Year.” She also writes recipe tips, ingredient explainers, restaurant guides, and reported stories about workers, owners, and communities. Her subjects include regional specialties, dining scenes, kitchen basics, and food industries. Her work has appeared with OpenTable and Yahoo. She reports on the ground, explains techniques clearly, and connects specific dishes and places to larger stories about food and livelihood.
Alana Edgin
Alana Edgin is a business reporter whose strongest focus is food, restaurants and consumer-facing businesses. She works at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and has also had work syndicated across AOL and Yahoo News. She covers new openings, closings, expansions and franchise growth, along with retail, health, services, corporate news, data incidents, business support programs and sponsorships. Her reporting includes detailed roundups of new restaurants and businesses, coverage of El Pollo Loco’s opening, and stories on burger trucks, dessert shops, Vietnamese sandwich restaurants and gourmet markets. She also contributes to food and drink reviews, including fall coffee and jerky comparisons. Edgin reports with practical “what, when, where” details, structured comparisons and clear explanations of how offers, partnerships and business changes affect consumers and the local economy.