A big win for AJC Food

Hi, food friends.

The AJC Food team is still buzzing today after bringing home an Atlanta Press Club Award of Excellence last night. We won the Food, Travel or Culture Journalism category for the Atlanta 50, last year’s monumental dining guide listing 50 restaurants that provided the city’s best dining experiences. I was thrilled that my co-author, former Food and Dining Editor Ligaya Figueras, could be at the ceremony to accept the award with me.

We knew the Atlanta 50 project was special well before we submitted it to any awards competitions because of you — our readers and subscribers. The Atlanta 50 was a big hit, driving a lot of subscriptions and conversation. Your positive response encouraged the AJC to continue producing the Atlanta 50, and hopefully we can publish it many years into the future.

One reason I think the Atlanta 50 resonated with readers so much is that Ligaya and I offered real transparency. We explained how we judged the restaurants and shared our impressions in depth. We told you how many restaurants we visited and how much money we spent. I think that transparency, along with the level of detail included in the Atlanta 50, allowed people to trust our evaluations and find real utility in the list. I hope you still find it useful if you’re planning to go out for a nice dinner.

So, thank you! Our subscribers make it possible for the AJC to fund this kind of real-world, boots-on-the-ground food journalism, which required hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars.

We want to keep the momentum going, so we’d love to hear from more of you as we continue surveying readers about this newsletter and our food coverage in general. We first shared this survey last week and appreciated the strong response, but we want for even more of you to weigh in!

If you have five minutes, please follow this link to fill out our survey.