We publish a Deep Dish every six weeks or so, crafting a mini-magazine of stories around a central theme. For our small staff, it’s an all-hands-on-deck effort in addition to our regular publishing cadence. We start with a brainstorm, which arises from topics that are clearly gathering force in our food system, with implications for all of us.
Once we’ve settled on a topic, and created a mesh of stories that amplify and resonate with one another, we assign reporters, research photos, and identify potential art. This intense work is deeply gratifying, allowing us to go deep on a topic, and we see newsletter open rates of 80 to 90 percent—far exceeding the industry average.
For “Indigenous Foodways,” we delved more deeply into a topic we cover year-round, and invited Civil Eats contributor Kate Nelson, an Alaska Native Tlingit tribal member, to guest-edit. Nelson also wrote a piece herself, about the connections between tribal food sovereignty and the Land Back movement.
Other stories touched on tribal issues in the endlessly delayed farm bill, Navajo water rights, a prized fish called the Clear Lake hitch, and an interview with ethnobotanist and food sovereignty activist Linda Black Elk. These stories, we felt, had much to teach us about Indigenous foodways and how to begin to decolonize our experiences with food and agriculture.
With “Revitalizing Home Cooking,” we enlisted a star-studded group of experts to help address many of our home cooking challenges, and in the process, help remind us that cooking can be both joyful and a meaningful way to support a good, fair, and just food system. Cookbook author Kim O’Donnel spoke to us about why cooking is the cornerstone of sustainability; we got tips on meal prep from cookbook author Nik Sharma; we went shopping with author and climate consultant Sophie Egan; we learned the best ways to preserve and store food from San Francisco’s Civic Kitchen and how to handle leftovers with writer Tamar Adler; and got inspired by some seriously ambitious dorm-room cooks.
We’re thrilled to be heading to Chicago this June for the award celebration, and to be among many other talented journalists from across the country.
We are especially glad that “Food on the Ballot” was recognized by the Beard Foundation, given the profound impact of the 2024 presidential election. The issue examined the candidates’ approaches to immigration, climate change, corporate farming, and food prices (we hosted a related member salon on the topic of inflation and groceries). We also scrutinized AcreTrader, a farm real-estate investment platform that counted then-vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance among its investors. That reporting remains among the top read stories on our site.
The elections issue was probably the longest we’ve ever published, and our members responded with enthusiastic open rates and click-throughs. Their engagement helped support our decision, this year, to launch the Civil Eats Food Policy Tracker, entirely focused on federal policy action in Washington, D.C.
We’ve also been nominated and won additional accolades for the Deep Dish from other organizations beyond the Beard Foundation. Last year, we won a 2024 Excellence in Newsletters, Single Newsletter from the Online News Association, and in 2020, we received the digital media award for best newsletter from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
