A neighborhood newsroom just like the San Antonio Report is at all times considering deeply about which tales will resonate with our group.
From common protection of metropolis authorities to enterprise and improvement, training and extra, we spend our days within the newsroom digging deep on find out how to higher serve our readers, serving to them be extra knowledgeable and extra engaged in San Antonio.
However any nice newsroom has to stability that information protection with options — longform storytelling that helps our readers higher perceive the world round them, not simply via knowledge, details and figures, however via the faces and personalities that make up the distinctive taste of San Antonio.
Which is why we’re excited to announce a brand new route this yr: The San Antonio Report is increasing the evergreen life-style part we launched in 2022 by including our first full-time Stay Like a Native options author specializing in the culinary arts.
We’re including a top-tier journalist to the crew to steer that effort, with a byline that must be acquainted to longtime San Antonio Report readers: Ken Rodriguez.
Rodriguez has been writing options for the San Antonio Report because it was often called the Rivard Report, writing massively widespread items on all types of subjects, from a mirrored image on the historical past of Jefferson Excessive College to a wonderful abstract of the lifetime of enterprise magnate Purple McCombs to a glance inside Spurs’ Coach Gregg Popovich’s outstanding generosity.

Rodriguez is a San Antonio native with a 30-year observe document of journalistic achievements. He’s had bylines at Sports activities Illustrated, the San Antonio Specific-Information and the Miami Herald, the place he was a member of a reporting crew that gained the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1999.
“Becoming a member of the San Antonio Report is a circle-of-life expertise,” Rodriguez stated of his new position. “After I was in third grade throughout the road at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and college, I watched the highest home rise to the highest of the Tower of the Americas in 1968. That very same yr, I made a decision to pursue a profession in journalism.
“Now right here I’m, with St. Mark’s in view of the newsroom, dwelling out the dream.”
Rodriguez just lately wrote a characteristic on Philippe Placé, who went from serving generals and the Queen and now serves San Antonio diners at Southerleigh. Count on to see much more of those culinary options within the days to come back beneath Ken Rodriguez’s common byline.
And there are lots to inform; San Antonio is a UNESCO-recognized Inventive Metropolis of Gastronomy, one among solely two cities with that distinction within the U.S.
San Antonio’s utility stood out from the pack as a result of its culinary historical past goes again 11,000 years. Plus, the Culinary Institute of America’s campus on the Pearl that opened in 2006 has had a serious affect on native eating places and cooks. Final month, seven San Antonio-area cooks and eating places had been named semifinalists for the 2025 James Beard Awards, and final fall, the town earned its first Michelin star for Southtown trendy Mexican restaurant Mixtli, plus 5 Bib Gourmand-designated eating places and a quantity with the “really useful” distinction.
We adopted our preliminary breaking information story on the Michelin awards with a step-back take a look at the crew of ladies who make Mixtli what it has turn out to be, an instance of the kind of behind-the-scenes story you’ll be able to count on in our Stay Like a Native protection.
We will’t wait to get began.
In the event you’re new to San Antonio or searching for a crash course in the neighborhood’s native authorities, enterprise and humanities and tradition, join our Stay Like a Native publication course, a collection of evergreen emails that specify how a newcomer can stay native, and the way even a longtime San Antonian can get to know their group in a brand new manner.
And please be part of me in welcoming Ken to the crew. Ensure that to ship him story concepts at ken@sareport.org, or join textual content messages from the San Antonio Report and textual content us your concepts!