Laura Lordi
Laura Lordi turns Palm Beach County’s dining and lifestyle coverage into visual, service-focused stories that help readers decide where to eat, what to do and how to follow major local events. She works as a digital editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network, and manages the masthead’s digital production and food and dining teams while continuing to curate food content herself. Her work is anchored in photo-driven roundups and clear, accessible packaging of local experiences, from everyday meals to large-scale happenings.
Food and dining coverage in Palm Beach County
Food and dining are a consistent through-line in Lordi’s work, with recurring pieces that spotlight where and what to eat across Palm Beach County. Her dining coverage includes visual tours of local ice cream shops, presented as photo-led guides to “some of the best” spots in the area.
She also produces seasonal food roundups such as a feature on “super sexy salads” for summer in Palm Beach County, keeping the focus on approachable, trend-conscious dishes tied to the local restaurant scene. Her professional bio states that she manages the food and dining team and enjoys writing and curating the outlet’s food content, underscoring that she is both an editor and an active contributor on the beat.
The result is food coverage that is less about criticism and more about discovery, using concise text and strong visuals to highlight multiple venues within a single piece.
Visual storytelling across events and nightlife
Lordi’s distinctive style extends beyond dining into visual storytelling around local events, arts and nightlife. She regularly assembles photo and video collections from signature happenings such as the Barrett-Jackson car auction in West Palm Beach, packaging “best images” and key moments into easily browsed galleries. Similar treatment appears in her coverage of Lake Worth Beach’s Street Painting Festivals, where she curates “best photos, videos” to capture the event’s atmosphere for digital audiences.
In nightlife, she documents venues at turning points, including a retrospective on the closing of West Palm’s Camelot nightclub and a “peek inside” a new West Palm club where Michael Jordan celebrated his wife’s birthday, both framed through images that show the spaces over time and at launch. She has also applied this visual, roundup format to more unusual subjects, such as a look at some of the biggest Burmese pythons caught during Florida’s statewide snake hunt, using striking images to convey scale and impact.
Even in pageant and lifestyle coverage, like a piece highlighting the Top 10 Miss America Quality of Life finalists during a West Palm event, the focus remains on capturing and presenting moments in a clean, digital-first way.
Service coverage and live digital experiences
Alongside lifestyle and dining, Lordi produces service-oriented coverage that guides readers through high-interest, time-sensitive events. During the 2024 presidential election, she handled a live stream explainer that walked readers through how to follow election results and track whether Harris or Trump was winning, positioning The Palm Beach Post as a digital hub on election night.
Her hurricane coverage includes a forecast piece on the path of Hurricane Beryl, outlining whether and how the Category 4 storm could affect Palm Beach County or Florida, a format that prioritizes clarity and relevance for local readers monitoring severe weather.
In features on rare phenomena such as the northern lights visible around Florida, she not only publishes photo-led explainers but also invites readers to submit their own images and locations, turning coverage into an ongoing, participatory experience. This participatory approach appears again in her event photo roundups, where calls for submissions help feed galleries and strengthen the connection between the newsroom’s digital products and its audience.
Digital leadership and audience focus
Lordi’s formal role in digital operations shapes how she approaches all of these topics.
Multiple masthead bios describe her as the digital editor for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network, with responsibility for managing the digital production team. A professional profile further notes that she oversees the food and dining team alongside broader digital production, and that she personally enjoys writing and curating the masthead’s food content.
Her portfolio shows this blend of leadership and hands-on work: she builds high-traffic visual packages around auctions, festivals and nightlife while maintaining a steady stream of food coverage that matches the outlet’s digital tone. Across subjects, her pieces favor clear headlines, concise framing and strong visual elements, designed for quick comprehension and easy sharing on digital platforms.
For communications teams, what distinguishes her is not a narrow beat but a consistent digital sensibility: she turns local experiences into curated, visual stories that fit cleanly into the masthead’s broader audience strategy.
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.