Nicole Estaphan
Nicole Estaphan is a reporter and producer for WCVB Channel 5’s Chronicle whose food coverage focuses on the stories behind what people eat, highlighting the families, traditions and histories that shape local restaurants, cafés and specialty shops. She is a five-time Emmy Award winning journalist who uses the program’s long-form format to turn everyday meals and food rituals into character-driven narratives. Her work includes a feature on a Massachusetts ice cream shop run by a family of seven siblings, told as a story about responsibility, entrepreneurship and childhood around a small dessert business. She returns often to the idea that food connects people to place and memory, whether through a carefully prepared cup of coffee or a proper British afternoon tea service.
Independent food businesses and family stories
Estaphan’s food reporting frequently centers on independent businesses and the people who run them, using their kitchens and counters as entry points into family life and community ties. In profiling a Massachusetts ice cream shop operated by seven siblings, she frames the shop as both a workplace and a shared family project, focusing on how the rhythms of a small business shape the children’s daily lives and relationships.
Her work also includes visits to specialty food retailers such as Duck Soup, where she documents a full British Afternoon Tea experience and shows how a single shop can become a gateway to another culture’s rituals around food and hospitality. She extends this approach to farms and producers, visiting a farm in her capacity as a Chronicle reporter and producer to connect viewers with where ingredients originate and the people who cultivate them.
Across these pieces, she treats food venues as settings for personal stories rather than just places to eat, emphasizing the owners’ voices, family dynamics and the sense of community built around their tables.
Culinary history and culture on Chronicle
Beyond individual businesses, Estaphan uses food to explore historical and cultural themes, especially when covering beverages and long-standing local traditions.
In a Chronicle segment on coffee, she traces coffee’s deep roots in Boston, unpacking how the drink is woven into the city’s commercial and social history and how contemporary café culture reflects that legacy. She approaches food history as narrative rather than lecture, grounding abstract timelines in specific locations, people and cups of coffee that viewers can recognize.
This same instinct shows in her coverage of events like British Afternoon Tea at Duck Soup, where she treats the ritual as a cultural performance, explaining not just what is served but what the ceremony means to those who participate and host. Her food stories often function as cultural profiles, using menus, recipes and serving customs to explain how communities define themselves and pass traditions forward.
Long-form, award-winning storytelling
Estaphan’s food beat sits within her broader role as a Chronicle reporter and producer at WCVB Channel 5, a station affiliated with ABC. She is recognised as a five-time Emmy Award winning journalist, a level of acclaim that reflects her ability to craft polished, emotionally resonant segments from everyday subjects.
Her professional bio highlights experience that extends beyond food, including work as a NASA-NAAMES mission journalist and storytelling around “fire, food and heart-warming stories,” underscoring her comfort blending science, environment and human-interest reporting. Colleagues and subjects describe her as a skilled storyteller; one collaborator on an ABC Chronicle segment publicly called her “a class act,” offering a glimpse of the trust she builds with interviewees whose lives and livelihoods she features on air.
For communications teams, her track record on Chronicle means that when she covers a food-related story, she is likely to treat it as a narrative arc - with time for context, characters and setting - rather than a brief mention, and to place the food itself inside a larger frame of community, culture and personal 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.