John Kirkpatrick
John Kirkpatrick covers business, nonprofit, and dining stories for the Owensboro Times, using feature reporting to show how local organizations and venues serve their communities and sustain long-term growth. He serves as a business and nonprofit beat writer and weekend editor, shaping both daily coverage and in-depth profiles across the masthead. His reporting also runs through the local chamber of commerce’s business magazine and related lifestyle titles, where he contributes member spotlights and community-focused features drawn from the same beat. Within that broader brief he returns often to food, profiling restaurants, chefs, and hospitality projects, from new pizza concepts to competition-stage chefs at established bistros.
Business and nonprofit feature coverage
Kirkpatrick’s core output is feature coverage of local businesses and nonprofits, with stories built around mission, history, and growth rather than breaking news. His profile of Daviess County Special Olympics, for example, traces a decades-long effort to provide sports training, competition, and community for individuals with intellectual disabilities, framing the organization’s work through inclusion and regional reach. In a piece on Aerek Automation, he explains how the firm fills a local gap in industrial engineering services, emphasizing both technical capabilities and the niche it occupies in the regional industrial ecosystem.
A Chamber Member of the Week feature on Retirement & Financial Strategies highlights a long-tenured advisor’s experience and the firm’s establishment date, using operational details like location and years in business to signal stability and service depth. His story on Mudd’s Furniture marking 73 years in operation similarly centers longevity, threading together family ownership, customer relationships, and the business’s evolution over time.
Across these pieces he uses straightforward narrative and sourced detail to show why a business or nonprofit matters to the community and how it has adapted over time.
Food and hospitality reporting
Food coverage is a consistent strand in Kirkpatrick’s work, and he approaches it with the same feature orientation he brings to business and nonprofits. His article on The Pizza Project introduces new flavors and traditions at a longtime local pizza spot, balancing menu and concept details with the story behind the venture and its place in an existing establishment.
In his coverage of a Famous Bistro chef advancing in the Favorite Chef competition, he follows a working chef onto a national stage, treating the contest as an extension of the restaurant’s craft and reputation rather than a standalone novelty. These food stories foreground people and context - owners, chefs, and staff - while still giving readers concrete information about offerings, concepts, and what makes the venue distinct.
The result is food reporting that functions as both dining guidance and business storytelling, positioning restaurants as employers, innovators, and community spaces.
Community initiatives and civic life
Beyond business and food, Kirkpatrick regularly covers community initiatives and civic efforts that shape local life, often through creative or collaborative projects.
His piece on the city’s snowplow naming contest explains how residents submitted and chose names, and it notes his role as Assistant Editor in helping design the contest, tying newsroom initiative to municipal operations and public engagement. Coverage of the State of the Economy event brings together remarks from local leaders, outlining growth trajectories and future outlooks while situating the gathering within the broader economic development conversation.
His involvement in the OT Sports Awards, where he emcees the ceremony while a local physician serves as guest speaker, shows him crossing from observer to participant in a bid to highlight athletes and connect the newsroom with the sports community. These stories extend his beat from individual organizations to citywide efforts, giving readers a sense of how events, contests, and ceremonies reflect broader priorities and identity.
Chamber member and partner publication work
Kirkpatrick’s bylines for the chamber’s platforms and related partner publications are an extension of his Owensboro Times beat, but they have a distinct, membership-oriented focus. Chamber Member of the Week pieces on businesses such as a car wash brand and a paint retailer focus on ownership, service offerings, and customer experience, written in a tone that is promotional yet still anchored in factual detail. Features on firms like Terracon, a nationwide consulting engineering provider, introduce local audiences to the scope of environmental, geotechnical, facilities, and materials engineering services the company offers, connecting national capabilities to local presence. His article on Wethington Family Practice presents a medical office through its holistic-care philosophy, operating hours, and communication channels, showing how a healthcare provider positions itself to serve patients.
Across these partner pieces he keeps the structure tight - clear ledes, concrete operational details, and quotes that underline mission - while maintaining continuity with his central theme of organizations serving and growing alongside their communities.
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.