Beat change taking NewsWorks reporter back to the beach

Pro tip: When your editors ask if you’d like to go and write about the Jersey Shore for a while, the answer is yes. Always yes.

Regular NewsWorks readers may know my byline from my work over the last few years with PlanPhilly, through its partnership with this website. Since March 2011, I’ve covered neighborhood planning, economic development, building constructions and demolitions in neighborhoods like Germantown and Roxborough — important issues in key parts of the city.

I enjoyed doing it, and was fortunate to be welcomed into homes, businesses and houses of worship all over the Northwest. Everywhere I went, readers offered expressions of gratitude for what NewsWorks was doing with their ground-level neighborhood coverage. That’s a rare treat for any reporter, especially someone whose past interview subjects haven’t always been thrilled to see me. I’ll prize that feeling.

Yet despite my love of old-school neighborhood coverage, and the geeky-chic Moment that planning and design writing are having in Philly (see any of the blogs which have germinated since PlanPhilly emerged in 2006), they simply can’t compete with the allure of the Shore.

Then again, few things can.

And so, it’s back to the beach for me, as I turn my trusty Prius south and east, grab some fresh notebooks and join NewsWorks’ Down The Shore blog. Clearly, this new gig will lack the special magic of a registered community organization zoning committee meeting, but such sacrifices must be made. It’s for journalism, people.

I first started writing about the Shore in the mid-1990s, and spent several years on the staff of the Asbury Park Press, writing about everything from waterfront redevelopment in Asbury and Long Branch to the Seaside Heights Clownfest. It’s not untrue to say I’ve reported from, written about or lived in just about every Jersey Shore town from Keansburg to Cape May Point. I’m neither shoobie nor Bennie nor local, but I’m hardly a tourist. Don’t call me an insider, just a reporter who likes to tell good stories and have fun.

Along the way, I hope to share some of my favorite Shore memories and places to go (but not the really, really good ones because then they’d become too crowded), and hope you’ll share yours. I’m on Twitter @AmyZQuinn, or you can email me at citizenmom@gmail.com

Now, I’m off to reapply my sunscreen. See you at the Shore.