American Media, Inc.
While it's best known as a publisher of supermarket tabloids like Star and National Enquirer, AMI owns a total of 16 
publications – including the best-selling country music title (Country Weekly) and the best-selling men's health title (Men's Fitness). But only a handful are published out of its nondescript headquarters in Boca Raton's T-Rex Center (formerly the IBM campus), and all of those are tabs: National Enquirer, Globe, Examiner, and Weekly World News.
3 comments:
Morale is, as we'd write on one of our covers, A SHOCKING SCANDAL! I guess all journalists complain about their editors, but you have to work here to appreciate how strange it can get.
For instance, earlier this year, AMI dropped a bundle buying the designers and copyeditors new iMacs and training them all on InDesign (from, like, a 5-year-old version of Quark). But they didn't train the editors of Globe and Enquirer and Examiner, the three major tabs we put out from the Boca office.
So after the designers do their thing, the pages are PRINTED OUT on full-color, high-res 11x17 printers. And not once, but twice. One copy goes to a proofreader, the other to the editor – and they both read it and make changes in pen. And not little things, either.
These two marked-up messes goes back to a copyeditor, who has to decipher the scrawl. Heaven help 'em if they miss one. After the corrections, ANOTHER copy is printed out for the tab's top editor, who also makes changes – sometimes countermanding earlier changes.
The editors are prone to yell at their staffs and even at each other, as deadline creeps up and they didn't do much all morning except chat about sports. Many (but not all) of these editors have skills: They know what works in a celebrity tab. But they've had no management training, and this is the only place where they've been a boss. And with no computer skills, they're unemployable anywhere else.
So the real heroes are (many of) the designers, (all of) the copyeditors and (some of) the writers. With a bunker mentality against the editors, they work well together.
It's ironic that interviewing was quite a good experience. If morale is "a shocking scandal," no words can describe the atmosphere over where that great Chicago company is sweeping up. I'll update but I made a smart decision.
As everyone know, our future is shaky. Compared to friends, I have it great, namely co-workers, pay and flexibility. This is a wait and see.
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