Meet co-founder Lauren J. Mapp, Daylight’s resident foodie
Lauren J. Mapp specializes in covering food, social justice issues and Indigenous communities
Introduce yourself.
Sekon (hello in Kanienʼkehá:ka)! My name is Lauren J. Mapp (she/her/akaónha), and I am a Kanienʼkehá:ka (Mohawk) and Black journalist who has called San Diego home since 2005.
Why did you become a journalist?
My love for journalism stems from an appreciation for storytelling, which is an important cultural practice in many Indigenous communities, including mine.
Ever since I could hold a pen, I have been scribbling in notebooks — although my earliest “prose” was a series of curlicues drawn while my mom studied for her bachelor’s degree. I eventually learned actual words, joined my elementary school’s student newspaper, led my high school paper (The Burncoat Patriot) as co-editor-in-chief and have been a reporter ever since.
What type of journalism do you like to cover? What topics?
I love covering Indigenous communities, especially here in San Diego County, where we have the greatest number of individually federally recognized tribes of any county in the United States. I also love writing about culture, social justice, the arts, travel and food, the latter of which was the inspiration behind launching my Substack, Tides & Tacos.
Who’s your favorite musical artist?
I have too many to list, but some of my favorite musicians and bands include Hozier, Garbage, No Doubt, Dashboard Confessional and The Beaches. My guilty pleasure right now is Sabrina Carpenter, and as a Lindy Hopper, I am constantly listening to old school jazz and swing music.
Billie Holiday, Etta James, Big Momma Thorton and Duke Ellington are some of my favorite musicians from the early and mid-20th Century. And if you want to get me out on the dance floor, play “Lavender Coffin” by Lionel Hampton or “Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home” by Ella Fitzgerald.
What TV shows or movies are on your mind at the moment?
Some of my favorite shows at the moment include “Severance,” “White Lotus” and “The Penguin.” I am almost always binge watching “Gilmore Girls,” “Bridgerton” and “How I Met Your Mother” — they are my ultimate comfort watches.
As far as films go, “Wicked” has quickly become my favorite, and I am counting down the days until the sequel — “Wicked: For Good” — is released in theaters in November.
What hobbies do you have?
I probably have too many hobbies — I love hiking, playing “The Sims” and dancing Lindy Hop, an early form of swing dance born in Harlem during the late 1920s. I am also a really crafty person, so I enjoy painting, creating handmade cards and doing Haudenosaunee raised beadwork.
Above all, my absolute favorite hobbies are eating interesting foods, cooking and traveling. So far, I have visited 20 countries, and I will be heading to Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland later this spring.
What does living in San Diego mean to you?
Since this summer will be the 20th anniversary of my move to the city, I think I can say with confidence that being a San Diegan means being a part of an incredible, diverse community.
Whether I am chowing down a California burrito, slurping a steaming hot bowl of pho, trekking up a hiking trail or busting moves on the dance floor at a Lindy Hop event, there is always some intriguing, new experience to be had here.
If you weren’t a journalist, what would you be doing instead?
If I weren't committed to a life of journalism, I may have become an actor, an artist or a chef — or continued my career as a craft cocktail bartender.
When I first moved to California, I was dead set on working in television and film and even got to be a background actor for “Veronica Mars.” I decided to no longer pursue acting once I realized I had no intention of moving up north and dealing with L.A. traffic. I also spent 14 years in the restaurant industry prior to becoming a full-time journalist and earned a degree in culinary arts while studying journalism.
If you could interview any person, living or dead, who would it be and why?
As part of my “40 Before 40” list, it is a mission of mine to interview my parents, grandmother and husband before my birthday this year. I love having conversations with these supportive, loving people in my life, and sometimes I fear I may forget their stories or may never get a chance to ask all the questions I have about their lives. I don’t know if or what I would do with the interviews, but it would most likely just be something I could treasure privately for years to come.
Do you have a favorite journalist or writer who inspires you?
Ida B. Wells and Nellie Bly top my list of inspirational journalists. The two female investigative journalism pioneers helped shape the news industry at the turn of the 20th century, a time when it was even more difficult for women to break into the profession.
Born as a slave and freed due to the Emancipation Proclamation, Wells was one of the founders of the NAACP and a leader in the civil rights movement. Her reporting focused on racial discrimination and the fight for social justice and included articles on the lynchings of Black Americans.
Meanwhile, Bly went undercover as a patient in a mental health institution, bringing to light the abuse and neglect of women within it, leading to reforms at the facility. She was also a curious traveler who wrote about her 72-day journey circumnavigating the globe using steamships and railroads starting in late 1889.
What’s the most unexpected or bizarre story you’ve ever covered?
On Dec. 23, 2023, I had just settled into my desk at home for what I thought was going to be a quiet holiday week morning when I got a strange call from my editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune.
“There’s a man stuck in a hole in (Ocean Beach),” Tarcy Connors said. “We might need you to cover it.”
Within an hour, I had instructions to head down to Sunset Cliffs to report on the emergency crew effort to extract the man from a cave alongside the beach, where officials suspected he had been stuck for as long as three days.
About 20 hours earlier, a group of teenage boys had heard the man calling for help. He was stuck about 15 feet underground, wedged into a crevasse in the cliff. Although the boys tried to help get him out while waiting for lifeguards and paramedics to arrive, they told me the man was too wedged in to be removed.
Because there was a police blockade preventing anyone from getting too close, I stood alongside the cliffs with television news crews from across the country for hours before he was dislodged.
Eventually, the extraction required the help of a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department team specializing in cave rescues, who used micro-blast explosives to break up the rocks pinning him into the cliffs.
Once free, emergency crews placed him into a rescue basket, then lifted him dozens of feet above the beach to transfer him to the ambulance waiting at the top of the cliff.
It was such a shocking event to witness and cover, and I often wonder how the man is doing today.
If you could write a headline for your life right now, what would it be?
San Diego woman can’t sit still, keeps traveling to eat new foods across the globe
Our first published story
Reporter Marco Guajardo dug into the story of this year's San Diego Latino Film Festival cover art and how its artist responded when part of her work —the face of an immigrant in the process of crossing a border — was covered up in the process of designing printed materials for the event. The festival has since apologized, but artist Paola Villaseñor, known as Panca, said she isn't satisfied with the explanation she has received.
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