Jeff Alworth Oral History Interview

Jeff Alworth is a writer and podcaster in Portland, Oregon. In his interview Alworth talks about growing up in Boise, Idaho; and attending high school in Salt Lake City; his coursework in Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College (BA, 1990) and University of Wisconsin, Madison (MA, 1994, South Asian Studies); his travels to India, and his co-founding of BlueOregon (a progressive news blog) in 2004. Alworth worked as a researcher at Portland State University for 13 years; during that time, he began writing about the industry for Willamette Week’s weekly beer column, as well as for other publications. In 2006, Alworth started the Beervana Blog and in his interview, he discusses differences in audience and process between print journalism, blogs, and book publishing; he also discusses the financial aspects of publishing, including sponsorship and the decline in print periodicals. The interview concludes with Alworth talking about memorable experiences he’s had traveling to conduct his brewing research.