Rivers Janssen, '96 was never much of a coffee drinker.

"I had had two cups of coffee in my life prior to joining the company," he says, laughing.

The company he's talking about is Fresh Cup magazine, a Portland-based major player in the business of coffee and tea trade publications. Janssen, who graduated from the SOJC's magazine sequence in 1995 and took over as editor of the magazine in December, describes the industry as young and vibrant and notes Fresh Cup's goals in reflecting that mentality.

"The people who start coffee and tea businesses generally aren't jaded, faded businessmen," says Janssen, 27. "They are young and positive and looking to get passionate about their industry. If you can't get passionate about coffee and tea -- more specifically, about the dozens of countries that grow coffee and tea and the respective people that cultivate the crops for 15 hours per day to produce a quality product -- you don't belong in the industry."

Janssen began to find that passion for himself when he was hired as an editorial assistant for Fresh Cup in 1996. He got the job after SOJC Professor Tom Wheeler suggested that he contact his former classmate and then editor of Fresh Cup Maya Wolff, '93 about a possible position with the magazine. Wolf and Janssen had worked together on Flux where she was the first editor of Flux. He was hired almost immediately and steadily worked his way up to associate editor and recently to editor.

As a student, he says never really considered going into trade publication work.

"When you're in the magazine sequence, trade isn't the first

thing that comes to mind," says Janssen, who worked as associate editor for Flux as an undergraduate. "But the challenges come to you when you don't expect them."

For example, he says, he enjoys writing with a combination of the research skills necessary to provide such a specialized industry with new information, and the kind of bright, engaging writing often absent from trade publications. Fresh Cup takes risks in other areas as well. With lively art and design and unique features on topics ranging from coffees in San Francisco's North Beach district and to how to host a tea tasting, the magazine breaks the trade model.

"Essentially, Fresh Cup tries to move beyond the stale writing and design that characterizes much of the trade press today," Janssen says. "We're a trade magazine that borrows a few consumer techniques."

Consumer magazines make an emotional connection with their readers, he notes, giving them favorite regular features or columns and providing them with consistently entertaining and varied content. Fresh Cup has the same goals.

"There are readers who really look forward to the next issue," he says. "These guys are busy; they're entrepreneurs. So you want to make the magazine as eye-catching and visually interesting as possible. You want to give them a reason to sit down and read it. If they're serious about the trade, they'll read it anyway. But if we can make a connection with them through the content, they'll look forward to it."

Check out Fresh Cup at www.freshcup.com.