Talia Ralph, PRK Guest Contributor
Kat Kinsman (seated) and Sarah LeTrent are the foodies behind CNN's new food blog. (Courtesy of CNN)
There’s never been a better time to be a foodie – especially if you’re a foodie who spends a good chunk of your day online. There are enough food blogs out there to satiate any taste (and distract you from any amount of productive work), from the visually stunning curation of Tastespotting to the pork worship of Bacon Unwrapped.
On June 17, CNN decided to jump into the mix with their latest blog, Eatocracy, an entire corner of CNN.com dedicated entirely to eating. Their motto says it all: if it tastes good, it is good. (I’m thinking of adopting it as my personal mantra.)
Eatocracy editor Kat Kinsman, formerly of AOL and Slashfood, caught up with us in-between on-air interviews with CNN anchors. Her discovery?
“Every single anchor has talked to me about how much they love food,” Kinsman laughs. But of course — as the blog capitalizes on — the what, how, and where from of eating has become much more top-of-mind.
“It makes tremendous sense for CNN to be doing a food blog,” Kinsman says. “Everybody eats every day. People are taking a little bit of a closer look about what they’re eating now, and in the age of food blogs, there is no bite that goes undocumented. So, you know, we thought, well, we have an interesting perspective on this.”
The site has already made use of CNN’s talented staff. Many of the network’s employees — from Anderson Cooper to various producers and art directors — have already produced labors of love for the blog, including a profile segment on a popsicle maker that captivated the video team so much they did the story for free.
Eatocracy has also taken advantage of CNN’s global reach to bring readers stories about unique meals from around the globe.
“There was a director of photography, Mark Hill, who showed me a picture of a meal he ate in Abu Dhabi and I said ‘how did that get on your plate?’ most people don’t get a chance to be in Abu Dhabi.,” Kinsman recalls. “And he talked about being on a shoot there and asking the driver to take him somewhere really great for lunch. And the driver took him to Subway. And he said ‘II think we’re looking for something a liiittle bit more local.’ And he said ‘Ohh, you want to eat Arabic food! Why didn’t you tell me that?’ And they went and had this tremendous meal.”
Stories like that are only part of Eatocracy’s arsenal of original food content. As an online forum, it also strives to create a place online where readers can both get food news and share their food stories. Kinsman and her co-editor Sarah LeTrent (also pulled from AOL/Slashfood) churn out multiple daily features every day llike Boxed Lunch, a noontime news update, and Eatcyclopedia, a dictionary-style reference for culinary terms.
But fittingly, some of Kinsman’s favorite features of the site are the ones that are generated by the Eatocracy community.
“My favorite feature has got to be the heirloom recipe index, where [we ask] readers to scan in recipes their mothers, their grandmothers, or other family members have made. We have an ongoing joke that we’re going to make your grandmother a rock star.”
No matter what goes on the blog, or where it is headed in the future, its guiding principle of taste and quality is one we can all agree on. “We’re not going to say that every food is good for you,” Kinsman says. “But if some sort of food makes you happy, embrace it, and go for it, and tell us about it. We want to hear.”