We respond to the distress and anger expressed by many in the coffee community about the article that appeared in this space on July 29
A message from Sarah Allen on behalf of Barista Magazine
Recently we published an installment of our long-running informal interview series, “10 Minutes With” here at Barista Magazine Online which drew a number of complaints from readers with serious concerns regarding the subject of the interview. Although intended as a two-part interview, we suspended publication of the second half as we sought further details on the situation.
Allegations have been made from specialty-coffee professionals with deep ties to the community, and they have been just as strenuously denied by the subject of the interview. Evidence has been produced by parties on both sides of the dispute.
As a publication for the specialty-coffee community, we are not in a position to police and adjudicate disputes and allegations in a comprehensive manner, but it is obvious the publication of the interview has caused discord and disruption to the local coffee community in Southern California. That is not the intention of our “10 Minutes With” series or the mission of Barista Magazine, and we apologize for any turmoil and harm it caused.
Our mission at Barista Magazine is to promote and celebrate the specialty-coffee community, and encourage leadership and kindness within the business of coffee. If nothing else, the discord sowed by the publication of the interview did not do that, and instead did the opposite. Part one has been permanently removed from Barista Mag Online.
We are always open to hearing from you and discussing what you find important. We communicate via email or Instagram direct messaging, so if you’d like to talk, please write to us on IG at @baristamagazine, or via email to editor Sarah Allen (sarah@baristamagazine.com), online editor Katrina Yentch katrina@baristamagazine.com, and/or publisher Kenneth R. Olson (publisher@baristamagazine.com) and we can get the conversation started. We want to hear from you if we publish something you find concerning. We do our best to be as informed as possible about the people and companies we feature, but we can’t conceivably know everything. If there’s something we’ve missed, we would be grateful to hear about it.
