A new regional magazine designed for visitors will be published next January by The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer. The magazine, titled Our Coast, will be edited by Kathleen Strecker, editor of Coast Weekend.

“We see this magazine as an extension of Coast Weekend,” said Steve Forrester, editor and publisher of The Daily Astorian. “Our Coast’s topic will be the attractions, accommodations and restaurants of the region that extends from Manzanita to Oysterville, Wash. That is also Coast Weekend’s territory.”

Three things will distinguish Our Coast.

Regional travel writers will spice up its content, in addition to the work of some of Coast Weekend’s regular writers.

Distribution of the magazine will largely be targeted – to people who are paying to receive a product, in the Columbia-Pacific region, in Portland and Seattle as well as in Eastern Oregon. It will also be available in the region’s hotel and motel rooms as well as in visitors centers.

Online and mobile dissemination of Our Coast will be at the outer edge of those electronic publishing formats. Maps, directories, stories, photo galleries, videos and interactive features will make the electronic Our Coast its own journey.

The travel writers whose work will be featured are MJ Cody, Paul Gerald, Becky Ohlson and Matt Love.

Cody’s specialty is accommodations and restaurants. She contributed chapters to The Daily Astorian’s book “Eccentric and Extraordinary Astorians” and writes occasionally for Coast Weekend.

Gerald has written about hiking and outdoor adventure including his book “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Portland.” Gerald’s article about wildflowers on local trails was featured in a recent Coast Weekend.

The Portland-based Ohlson has written for the Lonely Planet guidebooks, including its guide to the Pacific Northwest.

Love, who lives in Newport, writes about coastal topics for Coast Weekend.

For both The Daily Astorian and the Chinook Observer, this new magazine marks a departure from prior visitor publications. For the past several years, the Astorian has published a guide to Astoria and Warrenton in collaboration with the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce. One year ago, chamber leadership signaled it would be looking at new options. That gave The Daily Astorian the opportunity to explore a regional publication that was not solely focused on one set of communities.

“Our Coast is a return to the kind of regional approach we used to take to visitors’ publications,” said Forrester.

For the Chinook Observer, Our Coast will supplant its annual Discovery Coast publication.

“Linking the accommodations and attractions of the Long Beach Peninsula to those of the North Coast makes abundant sense,” said Chinook Observer Publisher Matt Winters. “Increasingly, the traveler sees the Peninsula and the North Coast as a unit – with things of historical, dining and outdoor interest scattered throughout our communities.”

Following an announcement to Astoria-Warrenton Chamber of Commerce officials in March, Forrester and Daily Astorian Advertising Manager Betty Smith have made several visits to area attractions. “Our advertisers have been uniformly receptive to this new concept,” said Smith. “They like the publication’s regional scope and its extensive distribution – of a physical product and via online and mobile applications.”