About Us
History
The first issue of the San Diego Reader came out on October 4, 1972. The 12-page black-and-white tabloid was laid out on the dining room table of a 1-bedroom apartment on Mission Boulevard in Mission Beach, and 20,000 copies were printed at Western Offset on State and Market streets.
Copies were delivered to central San Diego, beaches, and college campuses.
Among the early writers for the paper were Kathleen Woodward (ex-wife of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward); Jonathan Saville, literature professor at UCSD; Eleanor Widmer, who taught at UCSD and San Diego State; Jeff Weinstein, who went on to review restaurants at the Village Voice; Connie Bruck, who later wrote for the New Yorker; Duncan Shepherd, a graduate student in visual arts at UCSD; Jeff Smith, a graduate student in literature at UCSD.
Since 1972 the Reader has grown to nearly 200 pages and 160,000 papers are distributed each week.
The offices of the paper moved to India and Date streets in the Little Italy section of downtown San Diego in the summer of 1989.
The paper went to a short tabloid (from 17" tall to 14" tall) with spot color in 1998, to trimmed, stapled, and 4-color in 2002, and to glossy cover in 2004.
Need a copy of this week's Reader?
Step One: Use the neighborhood dropdown or search box to find the neighborhood closest to you.
Step Two: Click on the map for that neighborhood.
Step Three: Click on "Find a Reader"
Current Writers
- Matthew Alice
- Straight from the Hip
- Barbarella
- Cover stories, Diary of a Diva, Your Week and Welcome to It — was discovered in the blog world
- Don Bauder
- City Lights — was business editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune for over 20 years
- Ed Bedford
- Writes the cheap eats column: Tin Fork
- Josh Board
- Features, Musician interviews, Crasher, Off the Cuff
- John Brizzolara
- Features, T.G.I.F. — his novels include Wirecutter
and Empire's Horizon
- Brian Carver
- As I Hear It (review of local CDs)
- William Crain
- Of Note (concert previews)
- Patrick Daugherty
- Sporting Box — wrote for the Berkeley Monthly before starting at the Reader
- Joe Deegan
- City Lights — taught as adjunct professor at City College
- W.S. DiPiero
- Art reviews — professor of English at Stanford, recipient of Guggenheim and Merrill grants
- Stephen Dobyns
- Features — poetry includes the collections Velocities: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1992
, Cemetery Nights
,
— fiction includes Cold Dog Soup
and The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini
- Dave Good
- Of Note (concert previews)
- Ernie Grimm
- City Lights — serves as features editor
- Dorian Hargrove
- City Lights, Neighborhood News, Blurt
- Larry Harmon
- Blurt, Features
- Michael Hemmingson
- Blurt, musician interviews — writes San Diego-centered novels (Wild Turkey
, In the Background Is a Walled City
)
- Rosa Jurjevics
- Features
- Eve Kelly
- Best Buys
- Ken Kuhlken
- Features — his private-eye novels include Do-Re-Mi, The
, No Cats, No Chocolate
, and Vagabond Virgins: A Hickey Family Mystery (Hickey Family)
- Thomas Larson
- Features — author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative
- Ken Leighton
- Blurt
- Deirdre Lickona
- What's That You're Reading
- Matthew Lickona
- Sheep and Goats, Crush, features — author of Swimming With Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic
- Thomas Lux
- Cover stories — holds poetry chair at Georgia Institute of Technology, has received Guggenheim and NEH awards
- Bill Manson
- Features
- Bart Mendoza
- Blurt
- Barnaby Monk
- Club Crawler
- Ollie
- Hometown CDs, Remote Control King, Say What, Surf Diego
- Matt Potter
- Cover stories, City Lights/Under the Radar, features — serves as senior editor
- Jay Allen Sanford
- Jay Allen Sanford co-created the comic book line Rock 'N' Roll Comics. He contributes weekly to musician interviews and Blurt, and draws the comic strips Overheard in San Diego (debuted 1996) and Famous Former Neighbors (since 2004).
- Jerry Schad
- Roam-a-Rama, outdoors calendar — is professor of astronomy at Mesa College and is the author of 101 Hikes in Southern California: Exploring Mountains, Seashore and Desert (101 Hikes)
, Afoot & Afield San Diego County: A Comprehensive Hiking Guide (Afoot and Afield)
, and Trail Runner's Guide to San Diego: 50 Great City and Country Runs (Trail Runner's Guide)
- Duncan Shepherd
- Movie reviews
- Jeff Smith
- Theater Reviews, Unforgettable: Long Ago San Diego
- Naomi Wise
- Restaurant reviews — is co-author of On the Edge: The Life and Times of Francis Coppola
