Why we’re covering food

At Fresnoland Food, we believe that food and restaurants are at least as important to a city’s civic health as arts and culture. Food is an art, and an expression of the people and places that produced it, but it’s also an essential: art we wouldn’t want to live without, and without food we literally couldn’t. 

Fresnoland was founded on the premise that the million plus people that live in our region deserve in-depth, investigative and community-centered reporting. We believe that journalism isn’t about sharing the latest developments in our city – it’s providing context and history to help us become more engaged in support of a better city and region.

Both kinds of coverage are exactly the areas that have suffered with the decimation of local newsrooms. According to a report last year by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, 275,000 local news jobs have disappeared since 2005, a decline of 75%. So it is that local arts writing is a nearly forgotten relic, and food and restaurant coverage hasn’t fared much better. It’s debatable how well an out-of-town stringer can cover books, television, or movies for a local audience, but the limitations of time and space dictate that they certainly can’t cover local food. 

All of which is a shame, as we believe that knowing what restaurants are opening, which local chefs are innovating, and where to find a great burger or pho are as vital to local communities as knowing how your politicians are spending your tax dollars or how development plans will re-shape our city. For the latter, there’s Fresnoland. For the former, now there’s Fresnoland Food. 

Who we are: Truly local. Truly independent. Nonprofit. Committed to the public good.

But is it profitable? 

Many of the multinational conglomerates who own local papers these days clearly think local food coverage isn’t – certainly not in Fresno. Or at least, not profitable enough to satisfy their shareholders. That is a problem, but the beauty of Fresnoland’s model is that we don’t have shareholders. Instead, we have donors and readers like you – people who have an interest in their own communities.

As a nonprofit, we can focus on helping to make and keep the San Joaquin Valley an interesting place to live, rather than exist at the whims of out-of-town money. Can the private sector do what we do? Rarely in a way that’s profitable enough for the big newspaper conglomerates (not truly local), or that isn’t beholden to vested interests (not truly independent). Can national public media do it? Not without funding that’s forever at risk of becoming a political football. Our model allows us to do local coverage because we believe it’s a public good, supported by the same local communities it benefits.

Making this model work, that’s where you come in. Local food coverage needs local support. We’re honored to launch this project with a founding sponsorship from F3 Local, the Food-Farms-Future initiative supporting local producers and food entrepreneurs. In the coming weeks, we’ll be launching a food membership program and will be sharing more partnership opportunities to work with local food-oriented businesses.

Interested in supporting us? You can donate here or explore advertising partnerships here.

What we’ll do

We believe that Fresno has a great food scene – diverse, storied, innovative, up-and-coming, and unpretentious. As the nation’s food basket, we’ve been the “farm” in so many bigger cities’ “farm-to-table” dining for years. At Fresnoland Food, our mission is to promote that. To connect people who want to grow, sell, and cook amazing food with those who want to eat it. We strive to highlight the stories of our local food artists, innovators, and artisans. 

That doesn’t mean being “objective” or “unbiased,” such as those things can even exist (spoiler alert: they don’t). Everyone has eyes, ears, and tastebuds, us included. We can’t be everything to everyone. What we can be is honest, transparent, professional, independent, true to our shared values, and invested in our own coverage, because we live here. You’ll never see us trading food and favors for coverage at Fresnoland Food.

That’s the kind of coverage you can expect at Fresnoland Food. And because we’re nonprofit, nonpartisan, and truly independent, you can trust that when we tell you about a great local spot, it’s because we like it, not because they’re an advertising partner. 

We eat well, and we never eat for free.