Almost lost in the tributes to Clay Felker, the legendary magazine editor who died this week, was his impact on West Coast journalism. Felker, whose creativeness brought comparisons to Time founder Henry Luce, copied his formula for New York Magazine in a California monthly journal called New West in the late 1970s.

Before media tycoon Rupert Murdoch sold it, New West was one of the liveliest publications around, winning awards for exposés on the dangers of the Firestone 500 tire.

It also produced the first long investigative piece on the People’s Temple, written by my esteemed former Chronicle colleague Marshall Kilduff, who couldn’t get it printed in his own newspaper because one of the city desk editors had ties to the "church."

New West died shortly after being purchased by Texas Monthly, after editors there came to the realization they knew nothing about California.