Somebody had to cover it

The papers that used to cover this side of the county have thinned out or gone. Meanwhile Riverview and Wimauma are among the fastest growing communities in Florida, road projects reshape people's commutes with no warning, restaurants open and close, and high school athletes have full seasons that nobody writes down.

East of Tampa exists to fill in some of that. It is a free newsletter that goes out Tuesday and Friday to about five thousand neighbors, plus the social accounts, the sports coverage and this site. It covers Brandon, Riverview, Valrico, FishHawk, Lithia, Plant City, Ruskin, Wimauma and Apollo Beach.

Who runs it

John and Danielle Plumstead, who live in FishHawk. It is not a media company. It is two people, a laptop and a lot of nights.

John graduated from West Point in 2009 and commissioned into the Army. He served in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011, spent the next decade moving about ten times in ten years, and left the service in 2022 as a major. Four sons, all born in different states. He walked on to the football team at Army and finished as a starting linebacker and a team captain, which is the part that explains why the high school sports coverage is not a side project here.

He has never had a job since leaving the Army. He started building businesses instead, and East of Tampa is the one that is about the place he actually lives. Danielle runs real estate with him as Team Plumstead under Red Sash Realty and is president of the FishHawk Spartans youth football program. John is the athletic director. Between the two of them they are at a field somewhere in this county most days of the week, which is where a lot of what ends up in the newsletter comes from.

John grew up in a small town in northern Michigan where the local paper covered high school sports closely, and got to keep playing after high school, at Army. The part that stuck was not the playing. It was that people back home were paying attention, and that having someone write it down made the work feel worth doing when it was hard. That kind of coverage has mostly disappeared around here, and putting a piece of it back is a large part of why the sports side of this exists.If you are curious:the record bookand an award from a long time ago.

How it pays for itself

Local businesses advertise in it. That is the whole model. There is no paywall, no subscription and no plan to add one, and we would rather tell you plainly which businesses pay us than pretend the recommendations are neutral. Everything in the directory is a partner, and every page says so.

We also run marketing and Meta ads for local businesses under East of Tampa Business. Same people, stated openly, for the same reason.

The other businesses

Being straight about this matters more than looking bigger than we are.Team Plumstead is John and Danielle selling residential real estate across FishHawk, Lithia, Valrico, Brandon and Riverview under Red Sash Realty. East of Tampa Business is the marketing side, where we run Meta ad campaigns for local owners who would rather hand it to somebody who lives here. Both are listed in the directory like any other partner, and both are labelled.

What we will not do

No AI-generated images. No stock photos passed off as local. No recycled press releases dressed up as reporting. If we have not been somewhere, we say so.

Corrections and tips

We get things wrong sometimes and we want to know. Email team@eastoftampa.comand a person reads it, usually the same day.