Betsy Cribb Watson
Betsy Cribb Watson is a senior homes and features editor at Southern Living whose work sits at the intersection of Southern food, home life, and culture. She gravitates to stories where a recipe, a room, or a ritual carries family memory and regional character, treating food as one thread in a larger tapestry of how Southerners live. Her coverage is grounded in classic dishes, lived-in spaces, and the makers and places that give Southern style its staying power.
Southern family food traditions and classic dishes
Food in her coverage is rarely just about taste; it is about tradition, nostalgia, and the small comforts that define everyday Southern life. Her squash casserole piece centers an old-school side dish that people return to again and again, framing it as the reliable staple that anchors a table rather than a trend-driven recipe. In the feature on discontinued Southern foods, she writes about grocery-store staples like French onion party dip that readers still miss, treating mass-market items with the same affection and detail often reserved for heirloom recipes. Earlier work highlighted family food traditions such as “Roll Models,” where bread and baking serve as a way into stories about kin, memory, and Southern identity. Taken together, her food stories lean toward dishes that feel familiar and enduring, with an emphasis on why they matter to the people who make and share them.
Homes, entertaining, and easy living
Alongside food, she covers homes and entertaining with an eye for spaces that are meant to be lived in rather than staged.
In “Bay Watch,” she writes about a waterside home under the banner of “Easy Living,” using architecture, setting, and styling to show how a house supports relaxed, everyday hospitality instead of formal showpieces. Her editors’ guide to Charleston hot spots includes personal notes on favorite cafés and drinks, blending travel, dining, and local haunts into a portrait of how people actually spend time in the city. Across print and digital issues, she has focused on home stories where porches, kitchens, and gathering spaces are tied to rituals of cooking, visiting, and celebrating.
The result is a homes beat that keeps decor, entertaining, and food closely linked, with the house treated as the backdrop for ongoing social life.
Southern culture, etiquette, and regional stories
Her features often widen from the table and the house to the broader habits and codes of Southern culture.
In her etiquette piece on rules Southerners love to ignore, she explores social norms with a light, observational tone that shows how people actually behave rather than repeating formal guidelines. Earlier magazine work like “The New Southern Tastemakers” has profiled women shaping the region, tying personal style, professional influence, and community impact into a single narrative. She has also written long-form regional features, such as a multi-page story on Georgetown, South Carolina, where historic homes, live oaks, shopfronts, and waterways are used to illustrate what makes a small coastal city feel like a “hidden gem.”
Across these pieces, she treats manners, local characters, and townscapes as part of the same cultural fabric that includes food and interiors.
Objects, makers, and enduring Southern brands
Another thread in her work is attention to the objects and makers that give Southern life its texture, from leather goods to housewares. Her feature on a heritage leather brand’s American-made collection focuses on craftsmanship and longevity, emphasizing materials and design that are meant to last across generations. She has highlighted tastemakers and artisans who shape the look and feel of contemporary Southern style, presenting them as carriers of tradition rather than purely trend-driven influencers.
This interest in brands and makers dovetails with her homes and food coverage, where the tools, textiles, and serving pieces in a scene help tell the story of how people cook, host, and live.
Across these beats, Betsy Cribb Watson’s work stands out for its consistent focus on continuity: recipes that stay in rotation, homes built around easy hospitality, towns that retain their character, and objects designed to be kept and used. For food and lifestyle stories, she is drawn to material that can be grounded in real Southern settings and traditions, with enough specificity - about a casserole, a dip, a porch, or a coastal street - to feel true to lived experience.
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.