The exciting privilege to be invited to freelance write as a food reporter with the Baltimore Banner, is one I’d like to share with you.
What It Means To Me To Be A Freelance Writer
Having spent nearly a decade writing stories, sharing recipes and luring you into my world of visual storytelling through countless culinary videos, I thought it was time to write a blog post on a new area of storytelling for me.
I was delightfully approached by The Baltimore Banner, relatively new to online publications, to write feature articles for Anne Arundel County, which includes Maryland’s capital Annapolis and its surrounding areas.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure exactly what that would entail; food critics often do this sort of thing, but I was not going to be a food critic.
So I needed to find out exactly what type of articles the Banner wanted from me.
Food In Annapolis And Anne Arundel County
Having lived in Anne Arundel County most of my life, I knew I would be able to bring a feeling of personal connections, that come from watching your town grow over the years.
The experience of elaborating on different types of food throughout my blog food stories and a lifetime of food passion experiences, would surely equip me to titillate the readers of the Baltimore Banner to explore food in Anne Arundel County!
Whether a visitor or a committed Annapolitan, the boating hub of Maryland has something for everyone, and that includes food!
Being a native Annapolitan, I can tell you that the food scene has always dazzled, as well as changed with the times.
Can I just tell you how excited I am to be able to talk with you about the food in my town!
The Best Invitations Are Those That Come As A Surprise
What a delightful and unexpected Christmas gift to receive a private message, through Instagram, December 22, 2023, from someone I’ve never met.
Having been on Instagram and Facebook for quite a long time, I have met numerous interesting and engaging people; from food stylist to food blogging, restaurant reviews around the world, to online magazines, a few that ended up doing an article on me.
- Canvas Rebel Magazine – an online magazine that aims to create a space for artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs to learn from each other through storytelling.
- Edible DC – focuses on the farmers, growers, fishers, home cooks, chefs and others who energize our culinary community.
- Next Avenue – the first and only national publication for older adults in public media.
- Voyage Baltimore Magazine – an online publication to promote mom and pops, artists, creatives, makers and small businesses by providing a platform for these hidden gems to tell their stories in their own words.
The invitation to do Freelance Writing for The Baltimore Banner that December day in 2023 has opened a new world of culinary arts to me, and I’m loving it!
The Right Place At The Right Time
May I boast for just a second and tell you that this has been the second time an exciting invitation, of this nature, arrived unexpectedly on Instagram; gotta love social media!
The first time was when a casting agent, with PBS, reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in becoming a competitor in their new series The Great American Recipe.
As you may already know, that was an exciting experience that saw me all the way through 8-episodes and into the finale.
And while I have a hankering for more television storytelling myself, sharing stories with The Baltimore Banner and its many readers, gives me the pleasure to be able to highlight the stories of others.
With So Many Options In A Cool Hip Town – How Do You Choose What To Write About?
‘Timing is everything’, whispers the universe. December 11, my birthday, plans were made to take me to a restaurant I often enjoyed. As I entered Flamant restaurant, something wasn’t right. One of the dining rooms, the room we requested to be seated in, was closed.
Rather than stay at a nearly empty restaurant, I quick called another favored restaurant, Lewnes Steak House, on the whim of an available table, where the evening unfolded beautifully.
Having family that has been in the restaurant business and events catering business for nearly five decades has honed me with years of experience in the culinary business, and so writing food articles was going to come naturally for me.
A Successful Food Writer Inspires The Love Of Food
I received the invitation from The Baltimore Banner on December 22, around the same time I also received the news that Flamant was closing, and within a very short time, another restaurant would open with a very different concept.
New restaurants are a big deal in Annapolis simply because it’s a small town with lots of unique dining experiences and most restaurants stay in business for many years.
This, was going to be my first story!
As the plot for my story began to build on itself, I discovered ties existed between Lewnes restaurant and the new restaurant, InGrano, soon to open, in that the gentlemen from both restaurants grew up together. Gotta love a small town.
The best way to inspire readers to flock to InGrano was to go there myself and fall in love with their passion for the culinary industry and introduce Annapolitans to their vision for new recipes.
Is A ‘Target Audience’ The Approach To Take When You Are A Food Writer?
Having been a food blogger for many years, I’ve learned that food-related content is not always what brings a reader to my stories.
Often writing from a ‘healthy lifestyle’ perspective, a specific cuisine, or any particular type of knowledge is not what brings a reader back to my stories.
The best ways, I’ve learned, to develop a returning audience to what I am writing about is through developing a long-term relationship with my readers, perhaps this concept was developed after years as a hairdresser.
Developing the confidence that they can count on something interesting, something new, something that just might spark an interest they didn’t know they had.
How many times have we packed a healthy to-go lunch the night before but later the next day are having an ‘unhealthy lunch’ kind of day.
People are complex, variable, sometimes down right moody and want to latch onto something different from their norm, in those moments.
So what is it that triggers my article ideas when I am writing for the Baltimore Banner?
Life! Life around me, weather, local buzz, first-person stories, which is easy for me because I know my town and I have always been a storyteller!
Ethnicity In Historic Annapolis
There was a time, back when I was a kid, that you could walk from the city dock of Annapolis, up Main Street, on the same cobblestone street that remains, to get just about everything you needed.
From a fish market or meat market, bakery and ice cream, to a host of restaurants serving a variety of ethnic foods.
Those were the days when mom-and-pop stores were owned largely by immigrants and their families lived upstairs.
And while a few national chain stores wiggled in over the years, one-of-a-kind shops and ethnic restaurants are holding their own in this extraordinary historic city.
Sometimes people just want news stories that feel a bit nostalgic, a little vintage because these stories feel as though they are sitting with me chatting and not reading some quirky collection of AI information put together for them!
Is Recipe Writing A Part Of Freelance Writing For Online Publications?
The fast answer to that is ‘no’! At least, not as in ‘recipe writing’ as we know it.
However, when I’ve visited a restaurant I am going to be writing about, having had years of experience in recipe writing, has proven quit helpful as I seek to engage a reader in the food of that particular restaurant, and seek to cause the reader to feel as though they have tasted it through my foodie writing abilities.
The best foods to write about are those that strike a note of familiarity yet bring something new to the experience.
There quickly becomes a delicate balance between sounding like a know-it-all and simply writing as I might be chatting with you face to face.
Foodies Families And Fabulous Dining In Anne Arundel County
Which brings me back to a mom-and-pop story!
Back in the day, when my mom had a beauty salon, which became my career by the age of eighteen, and served me well through the years of raising my four children as a single mom, I got to know who’s who in Annapolis.
That didn’t mean they were the local experts, it just meant that they had become a part of the patchwork quilt that made our town unique, if only to us.
Wouldn’t you know it, the Lewnes brothers, Charlie and Spyros and their wives, were clients of mine.
I cut their hair for several years, and listened to the stories of the growing food scene in Annapolis, as they both owned restaurants in Eastport, while starting family life of their own.
Fast forward to now, and you will find many of the sons and daughters of these iconic restaurants, carrying on the traditions of their parents restaurant, while breathing new life into them!
Capturing these kind of food related stories is what I love doing most, not simply reporting on something you could read in ‘TripAdviser’!
One Final Important Topic About Me As A Freelance Food Writer
Magazines, food industry magazines. Will online magazines ever be as popular as a print magazine was?
Without the tangible aspect of flipping through the pages of a well-known magazine, tearing out a story to save, can a website, an e-book, an online food writer engage a busy viewing audience the way print publications did?
Well, let me just say, as someone who has a huge collection of culinary magazines dating back to the early 80’s, Bon Appetit, Saveur and Food and Wine, I honestly don’t have the answer for that, because I still believe people like to have a way of ‘saving’ something that sparks our attention.
The Baltimore Banner is still a new news website, launched in 2022, one in which (like nearly all others), you need to subscribe in order to read. But hey, did Bon Appetit or Newsweek send you their printed magazines for free?
Nope, we needed to subscribe. So… What are you waiting for!
If you’d like to engage in a long-term relationship with me and my style of culinary storytelling, then let’s get this relationship off to a great start!
I believe the table... that place that draws people to gather, is the most powerful symbol of togetherness. All that happens before the table is set, the planning, the gathering, the preparing, are all an intricate part of the dance that create the mood of celebration to share with friends and loved ones.