Food Safety News’ Next Chapter: Built on a Longstanding Partnership With LexBlog

Food Safety News has been shaping how the world understands food safety for more than fifteen years.

It emerged at a time when coverage of outbreaks, recalls and regulation was fragmented and often reactive. Bill Marler, the country’s leading food safety attorney, saw the need for something more focused and more accountable—a lawyer-driven newsroom dedicated to reporting on the systems, failures and decisions that determine how food reaches our tables. From the start, Food Safety News set out to serve the public, regulators, industry professionals and public health advocates with reporting grounded in expertise and independence.

Food Safety News has never been just another publication on the LexBlog Network.

Founded in 2009, the publication grew alongside LexBlog through a close working relationship with Bill Marler, Marler Clark and the broader food safety community. That relationship has always been about more than technology. It is rooted in shared values: credibility earned through substance, independence of voice and a belief that publishing can drive real-world change.

As Food Safety News looked ahead, those same values shaped its next move.

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Food Safety News enters this new chapter from a position of strength. With tens of thousands of engaged subscribers, millions of quarterly pageviews and a global audience made up largely of food safety professionals, it occupies a unique place in its market. There is no comparable outlet that combines deep legal expertise with daily reporting on outbreaks, recalls and food policy.

But the team wanted to do something different.

Food Safety News formally became a nonprofit organization and began building a reader-supported membership model designed to preserve editorial independence while strengthening its connection to readers. The goal was not simply to change how the site was funded, but to create a structure that could support the publication for the long term.

That decision required a new foundation.

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LexBlog led the effort to migrate Food Safety News to Ghost, an open source content management system, and build the site around a new membership experience, FSN+.

The work touched nearly every part of the publication. LexBlog managed the migration of more than 25,000 historical articles, implemented a new theme and homepage and configured content access and ad logic to support both members and the broader public. Logged-in FSN+ members now enjoy an ad-free experience, while non-members continue to access critical public-interest reporting supported by advertising.

The membership model itself is powered by Ghost’s native subscription tools, allowing the Food Safety News team to focus on journalism rather than custom infrastructure. Existing newsletter subscribers were brought into the platform as free members, creating a clear and intentional path toward paid support.

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The response was immediate.

Within days of launch, Food Safety News reached its initial membership goal for December, enrolling more than hundreds of paid members across individual and group subscriptions. That early traction underscored both the trust the publication has earned over time and the appetite for a model that directly supports its work.

Just as important, the new platform gives Food Safety News flexibility. Content access can be tailored by topic. Member benefits can evolve. New formats and offerings can be tested without disrupting the core newsroom.

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For LexBlog, this project reflected something different—but also a continuation of the things LexBlog has done since the company’s inception.

We’d never built on Ghost before. We’d never built a paid membership site before, either.

But at the end of the day, we know technologies change and evolve but our mission does not. And our mission is to serve lawyers and law firms in developing publications and publishing strategies that build authentic relationships with real audiences.

We look forward to seeing how Food Safety News and its audience—nay, its community—grows from here.