When I was asked by The Food Section to conduct a Q&A with Monti Carlo, the new senior food and dining editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I approached the assignment with rabid curiosity. The role of editor for the food and dining section has always been one of immense power, especially considering that the AJC is the largest daily newspaper in the Southeast. It’s also my hometown paper: I grew up collecting each day’s edition, rolled and bagged in plastic so it looked like an ancient scroll.
In the wake of Carlo’s appointment in January, I was eager to see her vision for the section up close. I wanted to know how she would manage such an immense role given that she has limited editorial experience in a position like this one. Previously, she was a food editor for Budget Bytes, an affordable recipe site, and has an extensive on-air resume. Was she worried too? Did she feel prepared to cover a city where she hasn’t lived for decades?
I knew that Carlo had Atlanta roots, but over the decades she’s been gone, the city—and its food—has changed astronomically. We’re no longer some talked-over Southern city when it comes to restaurants. Nor one that folk assume is only a mecca for Southern comfort food, by which they mean soul food pioneered by Black people. Our restaurants have won all the top awards, including Michelin recognition.
But mostly, I wanted to know if there was any chance that AJC’s food coverage could feel more alive for once. Could it reflect Atlanta in a culinary sense? Could it have a pulse on the dynamics of this complex city, rooted in deep Black history and carving out an identity in a changing world?
My curiosity predictably waned as I waited after requesting an interview on Feb. 4. For close to three weeks, there was no discernable effort by either Carlo or AJC communications lead Hugo Rojo to arrange a time to talk. On Feb. 10, Rojo promised via email to propose a date—and then he went silent.
I followed up on Feb. 18 and heard nothing back.
On Feb. 20, I e-mailed again, setting a cutoff of Feb. 27 to get an appointment on the calendar.
Carlo responded, apologizing for the delay; Rojo didn’t respond. He wrote back three days later, asking me to give him a call when I had a chance. I clocked that there was no serious intent to speak with me, and should move on out of self-respect; I told him as much by email the following day.
This time, he responded in less than 30 minutes to say, “That’s disappointing to hear, given that we still have several days before your original stated deadline of Feb. 27 to complete this interview.”
In the weeks since, I’ve continued to process my frustration and disappointment with this experience. I know that as I contacted Carlo mere weeks into her new role, I was too gracious to provide a hard deadline at the start. I gave her too much time and space to be definitive about speaking with me. That was a mistake, as the unearned hospitality I extended was read as a lack of urgency—resulting in disregard and deprioritization.
Sadly, this feeling wasn’t new to me.
The same disregard that the AJC treated me with—minimizing my body of work and stature as an independent journalist with 20 years of experience—was angering because it was part of a larger pattern.
It’s the same disregard the media at large has treated me with as I’ve increasingly refused to decenter Black history, Black culture, and Black foodways in my work despite the floundering interest in Black narratives since 2020. Interest that I’ve always felt was performative anyway.
And it’s the same disregard that I can’t untangle from what I’ve seen in the AJC as far as coverage of Black-owned restaurants, Black chefs, Black bartenders, Black sommeliers, and more. Fleeting, inconsistent, and soulless—if it indeed even happens at all.
Consider Carlo’s recent piece on Magic City’s lemon pepper wings for a substantive example of what I mean: the story mostly focused on her food safety concerns, and suggestions for a “cheffy version” of lemon pepper wings.
On March 28, the AJC posted a follow-up reel, showcasing the paper’s search for the best lemon pepper wings in Atlanta—a purely subjective survey, rather than a reported story of any kind. In the Instagram video, half a dozen white-presenting people—including the paper’s publisher, top editors, and a child—joined Carlo to taste and pontificate; the only Black staffer visible in the short is Access Atlanta videographer James Evans.
Other than the fact that lemon pepper wings are notable for being served wet, and not with a dry rub as presented, the centering of white opinion and narrative framing is evidence of erasure.
Only a handful of other pieces focused on Black food narratives have been published since Carlo took the reins: a review of an Alpharetta restaurant with a Black co-owner, a Black History Month deep dive on Black grocers who flourished during Reconstruction, and a story about why pitmaster Bryan Furman chose to open his barbecue restaurant in Oregon rather than Marietta.
For a city whose food and restaurant culture was built on the backs of Black people; for the cooks, chefs, bakers, grocery store owners, and other Black culinary entrepreneurs who served and fed their communities, it seems ahistorical and misguided to not be steadily focusing on Black food as the center of everything.
Because if I’m exceedingly honest, what I really wanted to ask Carlo, who identifies as Puerto Rican, was how would she do right by the AJC’s Black readers.
How would she ensure that Black readers and eaters, those who eat just as voraciously as anyone else, feel seen and heard in the coverage that fills the now digital-only pages? In what creative ways could she turn the tide and not default to the status quo of treating Black Atlantans—and Black food industry leaders in Atlanta—as an afterthought in food coverage?
These questions are confrontational and bold, but they shouldn’t be. Not in 2026.
Not when current editor-in -chief Leroy Chapman, Jr. is the first Black leader in the newspaper’s 155-year history. Not when an entire vertical dedicated to Black culture was created at the paper because Black culture is Atlanta culture.
Maybe, though, my searing disappointment is because I already knew the answer without even having to ask.
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