Bon Appétit journal has discovered a brand new chief in Jamila Robinson — and she or he’s reportedly a renaissance lady.
“It’s not day by day you get to satisfy an achieved author and editor who has led options departments and meals organizations, is a aggressive [figure] skater, classically skilled violinist, trainer, world traveler, and is an absolute whiz within the kitchen,” stated Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content material officer and world editorial director of Vogue, in an announcement Monday asserting Robinson’s appointment as editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit and its sister web site, Epicurious.
“Jamila is all of these items and extra and I’m thrilled she’s coming to guide Bon Appétit and Epicurious,” added Wintour.
Robinson departs The Philadelphia Inquirer, the place she joined the employees as meals editor in 2020 earlier than a 2021 promotion to assistant managing editor of meals and tradition. A Detroit native who attended the town’s famed Cass Technical Institute, Robinson beforehand held posts as editorial director for Atlantic Media, senior editor for options on the Atlanta Journal-Structure, and senior content material strategist for the USA As we speak Community, the place her editorial oversight included USA As we speak’s Wine and Meals Expertise. She has additionally chaired the James Beard Basis (JBF) Journalism Committee, served as coach and mentor for the JBF Fellowship Program, and is the North America East Academy Chair of the World’s 50 Greatest Eating places.
Credited with reimagining a lot of The Inquirer’s editorial tone and scope, Robinson “refocused its restaurant protection, centering the expertise of the communities who prepare dinner and construct native meals companies,” experiences the outlet. These modifications included working with well-liked meals critic Craig LaBan to revamp the outlet’s restaurant assessment system in a approach that “echoed a extra up to date approach of serving to readers perceive how eating places match into our metropolis’s cultural panorama.”
As Robinson defined throughout an look on theGrio’s “Blackest Questions” podcast: “[B]ecause meals is common, it touches each sector of what we do in journalism, whether or not that’s politics or the financial system, immigration, leisure. You may’t discuss sports activities with out speaking about meals. You may’t discuss immigration with out speaking about meals. And you’ll’t discuss eating places with out speaking concerning the financial system.”
“And so I discovered that to be the best pathway for deeper engagement,” she continued. “And it simply helps me do my job higher as newspapers and different media organizations are going by this transition, this digital transformation. … [food is] essentially the most direct pathway to transformation as a result of everyone has to do it. All people has to expertise it. And you’ll body meals in so many various instructions.”
“[Robinson’s] strategy to overlaying meals is as social as it’s sociological,” stated Gabriel Escobar, editor and senior vice chairman of The Inquirer. “It goes past recipe making and recipe tasting and has led to a few of our [paper’s] most bold initiatives.”
A kind of initiatives was the Emmy-winning “Wildest Desires: An Anthology of Black Inheritance,” a “multimedia challenge of photographs, essays, and poems about Black pleasure introduced by The Inquirer’s Black journalists,” for which Robinson was the lead editor.
“She has this potential to show a easy and obscure thought into one thing concrete and relatable,” stated Escobar. “That’s a uncommon talent.”
Along with her editorial achievements, Robinson reportedly helped steer range, fairness, and inclusion initiatives at The Inquirer throughout a vital time.
“When The Inquirer newsroom went by its personal racial reckoning — that’s nonetheless a piece in progress — her management was particularly necessary,” Escobar defined. “She’s a considerate, measured particular person and when she speaks, folks pay attention and pay attention fastidiously. That’s the mark of an actual chief.”
Assuming the helm at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, Robinson will succeed Daybreak Davis, who made historical past because the journal’s first Black feminine editor-in-chief in 2020 and one among only a few at dad or mum firm Condé Nast. Davis’ appointment was introduced amid allegations of racism involving her predecessor, Adam Rapoport, and wider-spread DE&I points at Condé Nast. A guide publishing trade veteran, Davis led the imprint to a number of James Beard and American Society of Journal Editors award nominations. Having resigned from Bon Appétit in April, Davis will return to the publishing world as an govt at Simon & Schuster.
Attributable to start the place on Sept. 18, Robinson will relocate to New York Metropolis to helm the 67-year-old journal, which presently boasts “over 5.7 million print readers, 17 million social followers, and almost 10 million month-to-month distinctive digital customers,” in line with The Inquirer. Reporting on to Wintour, Robinson “will steer Bon Appétit’s editorial path, model technique, viewers growth, and all content material for Bon Appétit and Epicurious.”
As Robinson informed The Inquirer, she’s excited to tell and increase the palates of each manufacturers’ audiences and the meals world at giant.
“My philosophy is just not solely to inform folks the place to eat but additionally to indicate why eating places matter and why Philadelphia is a world-class meals metropolis,” she stated. “That’s why I’m enthusiastic about this new function at Bon Appétit. The concept meals tradition is for everybody turns into extra expansive.”
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