All That’s News Under the Sun : Beach Newspaper Carves Its Niche in Sand From Del Mar to Oceanside

When newspaperman Gary Taylor makes his reporting rounds, he usually skips police headquarters or City Hall. He goes right to the beach.

He knows that’s where all the really good scoops are. His sources aren’t cops, they’re lifeguards. And his story subjects usually are sprawled out on beach blankets, not ambulance stretchers.

Taylor is editor of the Beach News, an independent weekly that over the past two years has carved a unique niche out of the North County life style--covering the world out under the sun, along the often-crowded beach that stretches from Del Mar to Oceanside.

Published out of a converted Encinitas garage two blocks from the sand, the paper’s small staff scouts the coast for news as though it were some small town with a secret to hide.

Taylor, 32, has lived near the beach all his life and knows the local beaches and their tanned cast of characters.

He is a former president of Swami’s Surf Club, an institution along the North County shores.

People talk to him and call him at home, like the lifeguard who tipped him off to the business at Moonlight Beach.

The county, it seems, was about to relinquish control of the sandy plot at the foot of Encinitas Boulevard, one of the most popular sun-bathing spots in North County.

Encinitas city officials, who apparently are eyeing the area for development, stressed that the same number of lifeguards would patrol the area under their supervision. The lifeguard believed otherwise.

In last week’s edition, the Beach News ran a cover story on the potential beach staffing cuts--with quotes from both sides. It was an example of the aggressive reporting, the editors say, that the paper’s readers have come to expect.

“The story about the transition at Moonlight Beach is a big topic for North County people who enjoy the sun,” Taylor said. “It’s a concern they’ll read about in the Beach News--and possibly nowhere else.”

In recent issues, the Beach News has run cover stories on offshore oil drilling and beach erosion, along with coverage of beach crime and weekly people features.

Unlike other suburban publications that confine their interests to city limits or areas such as music or entertainment, the Beach News tries to cover it all. If it happens on the beach--anywhere along the 21-mile stretch from Del Mar to Oceanside--it’s news.

And the editors are just as aggressive in trying to put the free paper in people’s hands as they are in trying to put it together.

Each week, 11,000 copies of the Beach News are distributed at more than 500 drop spots throughout the North County--not just in the major grocery store chains but in the beauty parlors and service station waiting rooms along the coast.

Within its pages are editorials, news service stories, film and entertainment reviews, along with several pages of free classified ads--featuring everything from overtures from lonely hearts to details on summer house rentals.

The paper, says publisher James Kydd, is also the only North County non-daily to feature a full half-page of comics.

In addition to his reporting and editing duties, Taylor does a weekly surfing column called “the surfwriter” in which he takes a lighter look at the coastal life style--including one tongue-in-cheek essay that recently ran with the headline: “When bad wives happen to good surfers.”

But the Beach News is anything but a surfer’s rag, its editors say.

“We’re not out to pretend we’re the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, we’re just not out to make waves,” Taylor said. “But we feel we do a good job reporting the news.

“Whether it’s a drowning on the beach, some rape or murder or even a beach clean-up weekend, people know the paper’s coverage is balanced and professional.”

The Beach News is possibly best known, however, for something Taylor embarrassingly refers to as “the girlie factor.”

Initial issues of the paper were adorned with cheesecake photos, often on the front page, of bikini-clad women lounging on the beach.

Soon, the word was out that the Beach News was a sexist sheet run by a bunch of leering editors--Playboy without the centerfold. One advertising agency even asked editors to stop leaving stacks of the paper on its doorstep.

“People on the street would say, ‘That’s the paper that runs all the girlie pictures,’ ” Taylor said. “They thought the Beach News was OK, but it was a little sexist, that there were too many shots of girls in bikinis.”

Former Beach News editor Donna Abate recalls feeling uncomfortable about the pictures when she came to the paper last spring.

“I wasn’t sure the pictures were all that tasteful,” she said. “I told them that it looked like the photographer was out looking for a date.”

So Abate, now editor of Inn Room Magazine in Escondido, began taking her own photographs as a way to tone down the paper’s image.

“No way was I going to take shots of cutesy people,” she said. “I wanted to show the rest of the beach activity, the surfers, the old couples, the kids doing their thing.”

And the Bikinis Remain

While the paper has run fewer swimsuit photos since he took over as editor in March, Taylor said, they remain part of the paper’s attraction.

“The photographs we run reflect what goes on at the beach,” he said. “You go to the beach today and that’s the way it is, guys and girls running around without a lot of clothes on.

“We’re the Beach News, and that’s part of the entertainment we provide. So, from time to time, you’re going to see pictures of girls in bikinis.”

Whatever the reason, editors and former staffers say, beach people are reading the Beach News.

“People definitely read the paper,” Abate said. “I’d be down at the beach taking pictures and see someone at every other blanket reading the Beach News. It was neat.”

A recent readership survey found that not just beach-goers picked up the paper, but often homeowners who live near the water. The paper’s pages are filled with ads not just from sub shops and saloons but banks and realtors.

The 45-year-old Kydd, who has worked in the business offices of several North County dailies, started his paper on a shoestring in 1987 after spotting a market for a paper aimed at the beach community.

Garage Now a Newsroom

Advances in affordable desk-top publishing convinced him to chance a weekly paper, he said. So Kydd bought a computer, rented a house in Encinitas and refurbished its two-car garage into a bona fide newsroom.

With its desks shoved together like carnival bumper cars, it’s no place Lou Grant would call home. But the place has character, staff members say. It has even developed a certain mythology along North County beaches.

“Everyone who reads the paper says they know where the garage is, or they have a friend who knows where it is,” said former Beach News editor Tom Fengler, now a carpenter working in Encinitas.

“Reports are it’s anywhere from Del Mar to Oceanside. It’s like all the guesses about the location of the studio where Wolfman Jack used to do his radio show back in the 60s. It’s a real mystery.”

But the real mystery, staffers acknowledge, is how the paper has survived in a competitive North County market that is home to dozens of newspapers.

First Issue in 1987

Since the first issue of the Beach News hit the stands in September of 1987, several weeklies have come and gone. But the paper is still printing, Fengler said, because of the accuracy with which it has zeroed in on its market.

“It’s locally owned and it’s close to the beach, but it’s also close to the hearts and minds of the beach community. People say, ‘It’s our little paper.’ It fills a niche in the coverage of the big dailies.”

Although he is not yet making much of a profit, Kydd said he would like to see the tiny independent weekly extend its coverage all the way to the Mexican border.

And that suits the staff just fine. Most say putting out the Beach News is like working within the family--or taking a room at the Hotel California.

When they can break away from the crowded newsroom, staffers are free to wander around the house, cook lunches in the nearby kitchen, take a nap, even do their laundry.

Sometimes, when Kydd’s 10-year-old son, Christopher, comes home from school, Taylor might offer him a few surfing pointers or challenge him to a game of horseshoes in the side yard.

On Tuesday night, when editors are working late laying out the paper, Chris will often ride his bike down to a local take-out place for burgers and fries for the entire staff--and might even get a tip for his services.

Family Image

At first, Donna Abate took the paper’s family image literally. When she was interviewed for her job in the living room by Liz Swain, the paper’s outgoing woman editor, Abate thought Swain and Kydd were husband and wife. Everybody got a laugh out of that one.

“I was shocked when I first saw that the paper was published out of the garage,” Abate said. “But it was like being part of a little family, putting out a product. And I always got off on the fact that, when I went to work, I went to the beach.”

Taylor, though, is perhaps the paper’s most blatant example of a beach journalist.

Maybe it’s the surfer-writer look. Often unshaven, his uniform can be a shirt and tie or cut-off blue jeans and flip-flops. The casual attire, he says, puts people at ease when he interviews them.

“Most often, they know what’s coming when they see me,” he said. “But I usually start things off with ‘As you can see, I’m a reporter from the Beach News.’ ”

Staff Horseshoe Contest

He usually writes his stories at home and often conducts interviews on lawn chairs in Kydd’s side yard. On Friday afternoons, he and Kydd convene the paper’s editorial staff for a horseshoe pitching contest and a few bottles of beer while they think up story ideas.

On Thursdays, when the paper is finally put to bed, Taylor hits the beach for a little surfing. And, of course, some more reporting.

“When you report on the beach, you get to spend a lot of time there,” he said. “I get to go out and go surfing and say I’m doing research. It’s a joke.

“But you never know, maybe I’ll see someone drowning. And then we’ll have the story.”