COYOTE Media’s Soleil Ho on cookbooks, freelancing, and running a worker-owned newsroom
Soleil Ho has always had a lot of irons in the fire. For a decade, they worked as a chef while freelancing as a writer. In 2019, they joined the San Francisco Chronicle, where they served as the paper’s restaurant critic until 2025, nabbing a James Beard Award in the process. These days, when they’re not collaborating with chefs on cookbook projects, they’re helping to run COYOTE Media Collective, a Bay-area-based worker-owned newsroom. Ho shared candid insights and hard-learned lessons for the cooperative-curious with IIJ leader Shernay Williams, and discussed their career as a food journalist.
Shernay Williams is an instructor and coach for the Institute for Independent Journalists. She spent more than a decade as a journalist for television, radio, and print outlets throughout the South and East Coast before serving as a business coach, running a content firm, and in 2020, launching the Black Mompreneur.
The Freelance Journalism Podcast is a production of the Institute for Independent Journalists, whose mission is the financial and emotional sustainability of freelancers of color. Learn more about our work at theiij.com
Episode Links
COYOTE Media Collective Owned by Soleil Ho
The 51st - Washington DC Nonprofit Newsroom
La Taco - Southern California Newsroom
Bake Sum: Asian American Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats by Soleil Ho and Joyce Tang, et al.
The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese Recipes from Phu Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between by Soleil Ho and Tu David Phu
Meal by Soleil Ho and Blue Delliquanti
"How COYOTE Almost Got Slopped by AI" by Soleil Ho