After more than two decades away, Hanna Raskin is returning to the city where her career as a journalist first began. And where she was arrested.
Raskin, a former Dispatch reporter turned full-time food journalist and founder of The Food Section website, is coming to Columbus today for the Possumtown Book Fest. It’ll be her first visit back in 25 years, Raskin said, unless you count a brief dinner at the Old Hickory Steak House four years ago.
Though she won’t be giving any formal talks at Book Fest today, Raskin said she’s looking forward to meeting other writers and attendees, as well as reconnecting with old friends and colleagues.
“My publication’s mission is to reinvigorate food journalism across the South, so any conversation I can have toward that end, I’m excited to have,” Raskin said.
Originally from Michigan, Raskin moved to Columbus for a job at The Dispatch in 1998.
“I was right out of college, and they had just invented the internet,” Raskin said. “There was so much happening in the world, in my own life, that it’s hard to parse out exactly what (happened), being in Columbus.”
From the bits and pieces she does recall, Raskin remembers Columbus as the city where she first tried fried catfish and learned to connect with others over a plate of southern cooking.
But her “fondest” memory, Raskin said, is when then-Dispatch Editor Birney Imes III sprung her out of jail after she was arrested on the job.
“It’s my only arrest experience of any kind,” Raskin said. “I’ve stayed out of trouble since.”
Her arrest came after Columbus Police Department held a meeting to discuss a string of five unsolved murders, which occurred between July 1996 and November 1998. Local media outlets as well as a national crew from the CBS news magazine “48 Hours” were in attendance.
Then-police chief Donald Freshour ordered all media outlets, except for the national crew, to leave the room while the department discussed the findings of three out-of-town criminal profilers. When Raskin refused to leave, Freshour ordered her arrest.
“I don’t remember what kind of talking back I did to Chief Freshour to end up in jail,” Raskin said, laughing. “… I remember talking to some of the other women and they asked, ‘What are you in for?’ and when I said I was covering a meeting, I remember one of the women saying, ‘Yeah that’s what I call it too.’”
Raskin laughs at the memory now, but coming to Columbus in the wake of several unsolved murders, Raskin said fear loomed over the city.
“People were terrified,” Raskin said. “At the time, Columbus wasn’t big. There were only so many people to target. … I remember when they were teaching gun-handling skills to everyone in town, and particularly the older women who were the targets. I remember being out on the … shooting range with a bunch of very small old ladies. They don’t make them like that anymore.”
The charges against Raskin were eventually dropped.
Freshour, for his part, later resigned and was sentenced to eight months in prison after pleading guilty in March 1999 to embezzling $4,400 from Crime Stoppers to pay a woman for “sexual favors.”
A love for southern cooking
During her time at The Dispatch, Raskin began to uncover her true passion: southern food.
“Being here gave me access to a whole different way of eating,” Raskin said. “… I was covering communities and people with whom, on the surface, I didn’t have much in common because I just moved to the South. … It could be hard to talk to someone about other topics, but if you ask someone about what they like to eat or what they’re having for dinner, that’s when I really understood the power of food as a communication mechanism.”
Raskin recalled being amazed, in particular, by the joy of southern cooking in gas stations.
“The idea of gas station food, I thought, was so great,” Raskin said. “… The idea that you could go get home cooking at the Exxon … it was so great to see that kind of pleasure and that kind of care was available to people who had so little else.”
Raskin left Columbus in 1999, and since then, she’s lived in seven southern states, with a brief stint in New York where she earned her master’s in museum studies. There, she wrote her thesis on the relationship between Jewish people and Chinese food and met other people interested in food studies and history.
After earning her degree, Raskin moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and became a full-time food writer. Now based in Macon, Georgia, she runs her own daily, digital publication: The Food Section. As the sole full-time employee, Raskin works with a dozen correspondents across nine southern states to publish restaurant reviews, feature stories and columns that highlight food’s central role in southern life.
“I built a whole media organization about southern food and its meaning, and that comes from Columbus,” Raskin said. “It was my first exposure to how food intersects with people’s lives, and that turned out to be my calling.”
Because Raskin reviews restaurants for her publication, she said she steers away from having her photo published.
Emily Liner, owner of Friendly City Books and organizer of Possumtown Book Fest, said it means a lot to have writers like Raskin visit the festival.
“… I love what she’s doing with The Food Section,” Liner said. “ She’s one of the leaders in the surge of independent journalism on southern culture. … It means a lot to us that folks like (Raskin) are willing to travel from out of state to experience the (Book Fest).”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 31 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 31 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
