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| Photo by Tim Stahl, stahlphotographics.com, San Diego, CA |
AFTER TWO YEARS--West Coaster, the newspaper and website voice of San Diego County’s
burgeoning craft beer industry, is celebrating its two-year anniversary by
revamping its format from newspaper to magazine with its October 2012
edition. Led by three 25-year-olds
editor Ryan Lamb, publisher/ad director Mike Shess and Art Director Brittany
Everett, the new magazine format replaces the tabloid look that West Coaster has had since its founding,
October 2010.
Because of its sincere coverage of San Diego County’s
amazing growth in small, independent professional brewing operations, West Coaster has developed a loyal
advertising readership base to match more than 100 different advertisers and
estimated 25,000 plus readers.
“By the time anyone reads our words, there will be 60
independent brewing companies operating in San Diego County,” says Ryan Lamb, a
recent UC Santa Barbara grad via St. Augustine High School (where he met
publisher Mike Shess). “We have to hustle to keep up with the news all of these
breweries are generating. Plus, so many
beer centric restaurants and taverns are also creating newsworthy events.”
With so much happening, West
Coaster outgrew its printer’s ability to keep printing as a tabloid and the
team had to switch over to magazine size.
Mike Shess, who as a kid grew up folding newspapers at home
(parents founded the now 20-year old North
Park News and Dad, Tom Shess is a San
Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles magazine writer and media consultant) praises
how Art Director Brittany Everett, a native San Diegan, reformatted West Coaster’s new look practically over
night. “She’s remarkable and without missing a beat one month we’re a newspaper
and next month we’re a magazine thanks to her.”
Advertisers praise West Coaster for being earnest in its
coverage. Right away, marketing pros
noticed the West Coaster staff’s focus on treating craft beer as the
professional industry that it is. Many
other beer oriented magazines in other parts of the country focus on drinking
and party hearty.”
“We discovered how good craft beer was in college—let’s make
no mistake there,” says editor Lamb, “but our generation also discovered how
terrific craft beer makers had evolved.
This isn’t bathtub brewing. Craft
beer is world class now and the center of this growth is right here in San
Diego County.”
Shess points out having few job prospects out of college, it
was easy to focus on being entrepreneurs.
“We didn’t have a lot to lose. We
made some good marketing decisions early on and were able to convince some
important advertisers that we were for real.
We’ve been working hard living up to their trust ever since,” he says.
Also, top beverage and food writers like Jeff Hammett and
Brian Hernandez came on board very early as did Sam Tierney, a college roommate
of Ryan Lamb. Because Sam is a college
trained brewer (now at Firestone Walker Brewing) he has given West Coaster its
industry voice. “Brewers have faith in
our journalism because Sam is our conscience and go to guy to make sure what we
print is real,” says Shess.
West Coaster’s
team has grown up with social media.
They understand that print media has its limitations. Wisely, they have created a monthly print
magazine because advertisers still prefer to see their ads in hand held
newspapers and magazines. “We treat our
webpage as our “weekly news venue and our facebook and twitter acts as our
daily voice that offers fast breaking news.
Put it all together and West
Coaster delivers the news in multiple platforms to a readership thirsty for
craft beer news.
What’s ahead for West
Coaster? A new logo, perhaps?
“No way, that logo is family to us,” says Shess, “Ryan and I
were roommates in Spain while I was in a study abroad program with San Jose
State. We arrived in Madrid from
California with all its wonderful craft beer tradition and soon discovered how
bland Euro beers were. We decided that
if we were ever to start a beer publication we’d call it West Coaster. The logo came about on a train trip between
Madrid and Valencia, where we drew up our logo on a bar napkin. It has been our logo font ever since.”
The future is looking good for the team as it heads to the
Great American Beer Festival (Oct. 11-13) next week in Denver. The Denver convention is the biggest event
for the craft beer industry. It is there
many of the 50,000 national craft beer brewers and aficionados will see West Coaster’s new magazine format for
the first time.
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