Food for Thinkers: Journalism at its Best

On Civil Eats, managing editor Paula Crossfield has a simple answer to the question at the center of Food for Thinkers week: What does—or could, or even should—it mean to write about food today? Food writing has the potential to be, she says, "journalism at its best."

I write about food because I think it is a vital issue that has for decades been critically overlooked by the media—and thus the American public—leaving a vast backlog of interesting stories. And because I think food has the potential to unite us.

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Head over to Civil Eats to read Crossfield's compelling vision of a food journalism that can "bring farmers and eaters to tables all across the country and get them talking to each other," as it "delivers facts about what is out there, and what is working and what isn't working, and lays them in the sunlight."

Food for Thinkers is a week-long, distributed, online conversation looking at food writing from as wide and unusual a variety of perspectives as possible. Between January 18 and January 23, 2011, more than 40 food and non-food writers will respond to a question posed by GOOD's newly-launched Food hub: What does—or could, or even should—it mean to write about food today?

Follow the conversation all week here at GOOD, join in the comments, and use the Twitter hashtag #foodforthinkers to keep up to date.

Image: London's Feast on the Bridge; photo by Tim Mitchell.