Discover the 2025 James Beard Foundation Media Award Winners!
Discover the 2025 James Beard Foundation Media Award Winners!
Congratulations are in order for many members of food media: Tonight during a ceremony in Chicago, the
James Beard Foundation
announced its 2025
Media Award winners
, bestowing medals to food professionals working in cookbooks, journalism, and television and audio programming. The awards whittled down winners from a
long list of finalists
that was announced in early May. Among the winners: Chicago editor Ashok Selvam won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award, while Ashleigh Shanti won a cookbook award for
Our South: Black Food Through My Lens
. In the Emerging Voice categories, Broadcast went to Mohammed Shaqura and
Hamada Sho
, a content creator based in Gaza; Journalism to
MacKenzie Chung Fegan
of the
San Francisco Chronicle
, whose recent story about her experience at the French Laundry was the
talk of the town
; and Cookbooks to
Paola Velez
, author of
Bodega Bakes
.
At the ceremony, host Padma Lakshmi noted the importance of the current politi…