MADDIE BALLARD

Deputy Editor

The newest member of the dish team, I write most of the copy in the magazine that isn’t recipes or drinks-related and check everything over for spelling and grammar mistakes. I’m also a keen taste-tester.

Maddie: I’m fairly certain I was hired at dish by accident. I applied for the job and got a very kind email back saying I probably wasn’t the right fit, but would I be up for some freelance work? Reader, I would. I turned up with a notebook full of story ideas – and Sarah, clearly in the full fluster of a busy day, just interviewed me for the job. I went with it, and here I am, four months in, still not quite believing it.

My job involves writing a wide range of stories – mostly for the print magazine and a few for online – and then sub-editing the magazine before it goes to print. Each month, I put together a couple of long features, like the one you’re reading now, and a bunch of shorter ones about food products, local producers and all things hospitality. I also write all the bitsy stuff in the magazine: the contents page, the index and much of the advertorial text.

Almost all my writing comes out of interviews, which are probably my favourite part of the job: I have the immense privilege of being paid to chat to interesting people all around the country about food, a topic almost everyone is excited to talk about. In my last journalism job, as a writer for an environmental magazine in London, I mostly interviewed very stressed MPS about why they weren’t doing more to combat climate change – so this makes a nice change. For dish, I’ve spoken to artisan cheesemongers, baking charities and restauranteurs of every stripe. At least one week of every month (at least out of lockdown) is spent flitting around Auckland with my trusty voice recorder, speaking to chefs and producers and the occasional celebrity. It’s ridiculously fun.

After transcribing my interviews, I spend a couple of weeks writing up stories, my other favourite part of the job. This mostly involves sitting at my desk with my headphones in, wrangling words into sentences, choosing the juiciest quotes and musing for far too long on the relative value of a semicolon over a comma – but occasionally, it’s punctuated by Claire offering round a cake she’s baked or Liam telling a so-bad-it’s-good joke, which makes it a pretty great life. Actually, nothing would be as enjoyable as it is without the lovely team around me, all of whom are stars at what they do and nice people to boot.

I finish off the production cycle by sub-editing each page of the magazine – eliminating mistakes and infelicities from copy, fixing grammar and punctuation and making our copy fit within the layouts Conor has created. I read through each recipe multiple times to make sure the method is crystal clear, all the ingredients listed are actually used and everything fits on the page. There’s nothing I really dislike about my job, but checking the recipes through for the fifth time can be a push: by that point, it’s tedious not to skim, but it’s up to me to make sure no detail is missed.

Despite my short stint at dish so far, I already have plenty of favourite memories. One experience I particularly enjoyed was attending a Wither Hills event in July. For someone who has pretty much never bought wine that costs more than $12, spending an evening sipping perfectly balanced sauvignon blanc alongside exquisite food in great company was pretty magical.