My new Sunday Times beer column!

I’ve joined Adrian Tierney-Jones (Daily Star) in the exclusive ranks of people who have a regular beer column in a mainstream British media outlet.

Everybody who does a similar job to me, for as long as I’ve been doing it, whenever we get together, says the same thing: can you believe there’s not a single mainstream British newspaper or magazine that has a regular beer column?

When I first started working in beer, Michael Jackson had a weekly column in The Independent, and Roger Protz had one in The Guardian. Both were cancelled over twenty years ago. Our new generation tried and tried to get more beer coverage in the mainstream press. You’d get responses like “We did an article on beer last year. We’ve covered it.” Or even “So long as I’m in charge, we will never cover beer in this publication.” A drinks writer I know who mainly writes about wine asked if she could also cover beer in her weekly column and was told she was allowed to mention it a maximum of twice a year. Mostly, we just never even got a response if we pitched beer ideas. Writers like Will Hawkes, Adrian Tierney-Jones, Melissa Cole and I would get one or two pieces a year whenever something was deemed topical. Pubs got slightly better coverage than beer itself. But pickings were lean. By comparison, every single broadsheet newspaper and magazine, and every single food magazine in Britain, had a regular wine column every issue – sometimes more than one.

So when Adrian got his column in the Daily Star in 2019, it was a time for celebration. Once a week, he picks a beer he likes, the brewer gets some much-needed exposure, and beer is actually mentioned in a positive way in the national press.

All it takes is a talented editor who is into their beer.

Now, another one of those has turned up at the Sunday Times Magazine. He asked me to do a couple of pieces last year, for which I was immensely grateful. They went down really well. For the second one, they went around the office and asked for questions people wanted answering about beer. There were supposed to be 30. We ended up with 43. People were clearly curious.

The comments under the piece ran into their hundreds. Some of them said, “Why isn’t there something like this on beer every week?”

So now there is.

My first column ran in the Sunday Times Magazine last Sunday. It was a longer piece, in which I was asked to list my ten favourite pubs. You can’t really do that in a national newspaper of course – it would have been a frustrating article if I’d listed four pubs in Norfolk, three in Sheffield, a couple in London or whatever. So I chose ten pubs spaced evenly around the country.

Like I said, my editor is into his beer. He also knows what works for a magazine like that and its readership. These days, you obviously want to see healthy circulation in the physical newspaper.But in the online edition, you can really measure what’s happening. Clicks and views are great, so we obviously want lots of those. But other metrics are also important. My Q&A piece was judged to be successful because it had the longest dwell-time of anything in the paper that weekend. Most people spend a minute, maybe two if you’re lucky, reading a piece before clicking onto the next thing. The format of my piece meant people just kept reading one more question, so they stayed there longer.

So, unlike Adrian, for now at least, I don’t get total free rein on what I wrote about. We work together to come up with ideas that will get the most engagement. If I don’t get that, the column won’t last long. If I do, it will. So getting the broadest possible reach is essential. It has to appeal to a mainstream audience. So we’ll be covering broad topics. If you’re a beer geek, there’ll be a lot of stuff you’ve heard before. But hopefully there’ll still be something of interest.

This weekend we’re doing alternatives to Guinness. The Sunday after that, it’s an introduction to Belgian beer. We’ll be doing British lagers, regional pub round-ups, opinion pieces, and generally raising the profile of beer.

Some people are inevitably less than happy that it’s a Murdoch paper.

I understand that. But it’s the paper that wants a column about beer. I’ve been pitching other papers for fifteen years without success, and these guys came to me. Do you want beer coverage in a national broadsheet or not?

Others are unhappy because it’s behind a paywall.

The funny thing about paywalls is that they mean writers get… you know… paid. Publications that use paywalls can afford to pay better rates than those that very kindly offer their content for free. If you don’t care about that, I believe that by entering your email address you can read one article. And I’m aware that there are other ways round the paywall too, though I don’t know what they are.

Anyway – I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity. I’m looking forward to shining a light in beers, brewers and pubs that deserve to be recognised by a broader audience. My plea to you is that if you do like it, and you do view it online, please stay there as long as you can, and leave a comment!