Siena Griffin
Siena Griffin is an intern at Boston Magazine who covers food and the Boston dining scene, with a focus on restaurant news and service-oriented stories grounded in local culture. Her work ranges from reporting on individual restaurant developments to broader guides and features that help readers navigate what and where to eat in and around the city. She also contributes to coverage of major local events and the magazine’s flagship lists, giving her food reporting a context within Boston’s wider civic and cultural life.
Restaurant news and the Boston dining scene
Griffin’s food coverage centers on the city’s restaurant landscape, especially openings, closings, and other inflection points for well-known establishments.
In her report on the closure of Davio’s Chestnut Hill location after 13 years, she chronicles the shutdown of a Boston-born Italian steakhouse that had anchored the Showcase SuperLux complex, noting its final day of service and situating the move within a pattern of closures for the chain. That piece treats the closing as both a business decision and a change in the neighborhood dining mix, signaling that she watches how restaurant moves reshape local hubs.
Beyond individual restaurants, she engages with the city’s place in the broader culinary hierarchy, highlighting Boston restaurants featured in the Michelin Guide Boston 2025. In that work she surfaces which local spots earned recognition, positioning them against the backdrop of an increasingly competitive national dining scene. She also contributes photography for food stories, including an image of a creatively flavored ice cream and a frappe identified as one of the best in Greater Boston, underscoring her attention to visual detail in coverage of specific dishes and treats.
Taken together, these pieces show that she approaches the beat as both restaurant news and a survey of standout experiences on the menu.
Culture, events, and service journalism
Griffin regularly writes service pieces that help readers engage with Boston’s cultural and historical offerings, extending her food beat into adjacent lifestyle coverage. In a guide to “Six House Museums to Visit Within Boston City Limits,” she catalogues historic homes and museums and frames them within a broader exploration of theaters, museum options, and other ways to explore the city.
That format - concise lists with clear takeaways - shows she is comfortable structuring coverage as practical guides rather than only standalone features.
She also reports on marquee civic events, such as the Boston Pops decision to remain in the city for the July 4th fireworks. That story tracks how a high-profile institution’s plans affect the city’s Independence Day celebration, illustrating her interest in the intersection of cultural programming, public tradition, and the logistics of large events. In writing about America’s 250th birthday, she uses a national milestone as a frame to discuss what it means to pause or rethink established commemorations, again tying local experience to a larger historical moment. These event and guide pieces show she is attuned to how Bostonians spend time - whether at a museum, a concert, or a restaurant - and that she often situates food within that broader pattern of city life.
Magazine-focused and power list reporting
Inside the magazine itself, Griffin writes about the institution and its programs, including a piece on internships at Boston Magazine. That story explains the structure and opportunities of the internship program, reflecting her understanding of how the newsroom brings in and develops new talent. It also underscores that she is willing to turn the lens inward and make the publication’s processes more transparent to readers.
She contributes additional reporting to Boston Magazine’s “150 Most Influential Bostonians” list, a flagship feature that profiles leaders whose work shapes the region’s culture and power structures. In that role she supports the lead writer with background research, fact-gathering, and detail work on a large, multi-subject package.
Working on a power list requires careful verification and synthesis across politics, business, culture, and civic life, and her presence on the reporting team indicates that she can operate in that more expansive, cross-beat environment alongside her food coverage.
Emerging national business and news perspective
Griffin’s current stint at Boston Magazine coincides with her transition into a national business news role, giving her local food and culture reporting a broader economic and media context. CNBC has hired her as a rotational reporter, and she is set to move into a digital reporting program there after her time at the magazine. Talking Biz News notes that she previously interned on a financial news show before joining Boston Magazine, signaling that she brings familiarity with markets and business reporting to her coverage.
That trajectory - financial news experience, food and culture reporting at a city magazine, and an incoming role at a national business outlet - suggests a developing interest in how economics, consumer behavior, and culture intersect. For communications teams, it means that her food stories are informed by an understanding of how restaurant news fits into larger narratives about brands, chains, and city economies, and that she is positioned to connect local dining developments to wider business trends.
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.