When Dalia Colón was 10, she submitted her school writing assignment to a magazine. When she was 13, she subscribed to the Ladies Home Journal. Her favorite section was a column called, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” She was also interested in cooking from an early age, French toast being a specialty. Looking back on her prepubescent interests in food and journalism, Colón says, “That wasn’t normal behavior”.
It is, however, behavior that has led to a career as a multi-media journalist, producer, on-air host, and author of the recently published “Florida Vegetarian Cookbook.” After graduating with a bachelor's degree in journalism from Ohio University and a master's degree in Spanish education from Kent State University, Colón received a call from an old school friend who worked for the then St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times. She called to say the Pulitzer-winning paper had a new daily tabloid called tbt* aimed at a younger, hipper audience. They were looking for an entertainment/lifestyle reporter. Colón left those Ohio winters in the rear-view mirror.
Doing what all good journalists do, Colón set about making connections and building a network in her new home territory. Attending a professional networking event one morning, she looked around the table and realized she knew or worked with everyone sitting there. She got up and moved to another table to meet new people. The plan worked. She’s now married to one of those people, Braulio Colón, co-founder and executive director of the Florida College Access Network.
Connections and mentors
Friends and mentors play a prominent role in Colón’s journey. At tbt*, she was working on a story about beatboxing, a musical art form associated with hip-hop culture. The artist uses their mouth and vocal tract to make drum sounds and other sound effects.
Colón needed to record quality audio as part of the story but had no experience with sound techniques. Reaching out to WUSF, Tampa Bay’s NPR radio station, for advice, she found well-known reporter and producer Bobbie O’Brien, who became a willing mentor.
Colón became a familiar face around WUSF as she worked on her story, so familiar that when former news director, Scott Finn, received a grant to hire a health reporter, he offered Colón the job.
“I loved my job but I knew the newspaper industry was in decline,” she says. “I felt like a lifeboat had come for me.”
That boat carried Colón on a journey that saw her hosting and producing five-minute health segments that aired across the state and won her a Suncoast Regional Emmy.
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Chip Weiner/Provided by Dalia ColónDalia Colón at Sweetwater Organic Farm.It wasn’t long before WEDU, the Tampa-based PBS station, came looking for a producer for “Arts Plus,”
a weekly arts and culture program that, according to WEDU’s website, is devoted to telling stories of the individuals and cultural organizations that make West Central Florida – Florida’s Cultural Coast – such a vibrant region.
Robin Sussingham, WUSF’s senior editor at the time, looked at coming trends in communication and saw something called podcasts. She started applying for grants. Sussingham didn’t get the grants, but the station decided to move forward anyway.
“The Zest” podcast was created to “showcase Florida’s food, foodies, restaurants, and recipes; as a celebration of the intersection of food and communities in the Sunshine State.” Colón began as the producer and editor.
Taking over "The Zest"
There’s an old saying that “timing is everything.” Following “The Zest” launch came COVID-19, leaving a cooped-up population with TV and radio as their primary entertainment. In a double whammy of timing, the on-air host of “The Zest” resigned amid the pandemic. Colón became the podcast’s host and executive producer.
Colón’s talent brought other opportunities. She was invited to write the “Heritage Kitchen” column in Forum, the prestigious magazine of the Florida Humanities.
Then the University Press of Florida came calling. Would Colón like to write a cookbook?
The author’s description of “The Florida Vegetarian Cookbook” says the book
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University Press/Provided by Dalia Colón"The Florida Vegetarian Cookbook" includes more than 100 recipes “includes more than 100 recipes using local ingredients as distinctive as oranges, tomatoes, and watermelon and as interesting as sugarcane, peanuts, cabbage, squash, and cantaloupe.” It takes advantage of Florida’s “year-round harvests and incredible seasonal variety of crops.”
Within the book, Colón combines her cooking skills with her talent for writing with “essays that offer the stories behind some of Florida’s most cherished food traditions.
Topics include the origins of the Florida Strawberry Festival, the rise and decline of Florida’s citrus industry, the importance of corn for Florida’s First Peoples, and more.”
Looking back on her journey since arriving in Florida, Colón says, “If I hadn’t insisted on recording audio for that beatbox story… Relationships are everything. I try to help others, to pay it back to the universe.”
For more information, go to WUSF Dalia Colon and The Florida Vegetarian Cookbook