Emily Turner
Emily Turner uses food coverage to connect Boston’s restaurant scene with the community stories readers care about. She is the deputy editor of community at Boston.com, overseeing reader engagement, community assignments, and innovation initiatives that span food, lifestyle, news, and politics, with a strong focus on local dining and restaurant news. Since 2019 she has led the site’s community coverage, shaping how reader interests drive stories across the food section.
Food coverage rooted in awards and recognition
Turner’s recent food reporting often centers on how awards and rankings spotlight Boston-area restaurants and chefs. She covers national and regional honors such as the James Beard Awards, highlighting New England food and drink winners and explaining their ties to the local dining scene. She regularly writes about Boston magazine’s restaurant lists, including its Best New Restaurant of 2026 and its Best of Boston 2025 roundup of top restaurants, using these features to map out where the city’s dining energy is concentrated. Her coverage of nationally ranked spots, such as a Martha’s Vineyard doughnut shop named one of the best in the country by USA Today, extends that lens beyond the city while still grounding it in New England’s food culture.
Across these pieces she breaks down what recognition means in practical terms for diners, from where award-winning restaurants are located to when they are open and what kind of experience they offer. The emphasis is on serviceable detail—addresses, hours, and context about the lists themselves—so readers can turn headlines about accolades into decisions about where to eat.
Tracking restaurant shifts and the dining landscape
Turner also reports on changes in the restaurant landscape, including high-profile closings that reshape neighborhoods and dining corridors. In coverage of a Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse location shutting its Chestnut Hill restaurant, she focuses on what the closure means for regulars and how it fits into the broader story of the brand and the area’s dining options. Her food beat work treats these business moves as community news, explaining how a single steakhouse or doughnut shop fits into the evolving map of where people gather.
The same attention to change informs her reporting on emerging restaurants highlighted by outside publications, positioning openings and new concepts alongside award lists and rankings. By pairing industry developments with clear, reader-friendly details, she presents restaurant news as part of a longer-term narrative about Boston’s dining scene rather than isolated announcements.
Reader-driven guides and community assignments
Turner’s role in community coverage shapes how she approaches food stories, often bringing reader voices directly into the reporting. On-air segments and features have shown her curating business recommendations submitted by readers, including lists of AAPI- and Asian-owned businesses to support during heritage month, blending restaurant picks with broader community recognition. These assignments highlight restaurants not just for their menus but for their place in cultural celebrations and local identity.
Her food pieces frequently sit alongside invitations to sign up for Boston.com’s food newsletter and other engagement tools, reflecting a beat that is tightly integrated with audience strategy. Through this work she treats guides, lists, and rankings as collaborative projects with readers, using interactive elements and community submissions to decide which businesses and restaurants are surfaced in coverage.
Background in local dining, events, and lifestyle
Before her current community leadership role, Turner built a portfolio of local lifestyle and culture reporting that informs her food coverage today. Her bylines at a Boston city magazine include event guides such as Boston Pride Week highlights, Tall Ships arrivals, and profiles of a busy neighborhood bistro, all centered on how people experience the city’s dining and nightlife. That mix of restaurant profile writing, event coverage, and practical “can’t miss” guides underpins the service-oriented tone of her current food reporting.
Alongside her newsroom work, she has shared expertise on audience development and engagement in industry workshops, underscoring that her food coverage is part of a broader focus on building relationships between local journalism and its readers. Taken together, her background in lifestyle features and her current community role give her a distinctive angle on the food beat: she treats restaurants as venues for civic life, cultural celebration, and reader connection, not just places to eat.
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.
Alice Mannette
Alice Mannette blends service journalism with narrative reporting about everyday life, using local food and gathering places to tell broader stories about community. She writes for the St. Cloud Times, focusing on practical guides to ice cream shops, wineries and other neighborhood businesses. Her coverage turns questions like where to eat and what to do this weekend into portraits of local entrepreneurs, weekend plans and the social life of her area. She reports food and drink as usable guides while tracing local history, culture and public safety. She also covers how people record their lives, writing features on diaries, family history and new books that examine archives and memory. Alongside this, she reports civic and public safety news and produces USA TODAY Network service pieces that compile clear, concrete resources for people dealing with storms and other emergencies.
Amanda Mactas
Amanda Mactas links food news, pop culture, and practical consumer advice, showing how brands, products, and personalities appear in everyday eating. She is an associate editor at Delish, reporting news and feature stories that span celebrity-driven launches, competitive eating, value-focused roundups, and taste tests. Her beat covers food culture, event-driven food deals, brand campaigns, product testing, grocery finds, and shopping guides, all with a clear service angle. She reports through specific products, personalities, and major sports days or holidays, using them to explain broader trends, marketing tactics, and consumer value. Beyond Delish, she works as a freelance writer and editor across food, travel, health, and lifestyle outlets, profiling founders, public markets, restaurant culture, wellness, and travel, and tying everyday eating to place, wellness, and routine in accessible, utility-focused prose.
Amelia Jones
Amelia Jones is a Fox 4 News reporter who makes major moments in Texas life feel close by centering ordinary people, often through food, fandom and everyday routines. She now reports across web, on-air and social video, keeping the camera and narrative on fans’ faces, crowd noise and local venues as she covers World Cup visitors trying Tex-Mex, FIFA fan festivals and standout supporters whose energy defines the stadium mood. She explains state legislative debates on issues like abortion pills in clear, practical terms, breaking down complex bills and legal analysis into real-world consequences. She reports on trials, crime, explosions and traumatic incidents through witnesses, victims and families, and spends time with small business owners and neighborhood groups in East Dallas. She joined Fox 4 News in 2023 and links daily life to the larger forces that shape Texas.