My employment at Entrepreneur Media, as a staff writer online and for its magazine, was terminated abruptly on Friday afternoon. The reasons given: Failing to carry out the duties of my job and – I was actually told this – because it was clear I was not happy working there.
I will cede the second point. On the first, let me call bullshit: Since arriving to the job of staff writer at Entrepreneur in September of 2008, I have produced more copy, written more words, interviewed more people, and penned more cover stories than anyone else employed by the company. Repeat that sentence to yourself, then wait to see if anyone from the company refutes it. You’ll hear crickets, and I’ll put money on it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect, but the quality of my work was clearly above and beyond what the publication was used to, a fact that even the editor-in-chief who fired me admitted. I helped to pioneer the website’s news blog. And most of my online features, including a piece about iPhone apps for music production, were picked up by websites such as
MSNBC,
The Washington Post and
U.S. News & World Report, a feat no one else employed at the mag can claim. During my time at Entreprneur, the editor-in-chief sung my praises, describing my writing to another editor as “beautiful,” and saying things like, Thank God Romero is here, because no one else seems to have a clue. In one email, dated April 30, she wrote, “You’re a great reporter.” When I was fired, I emailed a former Entrepreneur deputy editor. He left me a voicemail: “Failing to carry out duties? Give me a ******* break. You’re the only one that produced anything there.” To top it off, I commuted from the Westside of Los Angeles to Irvine, California (in Orange County) for the gig. The roundtrip took two hours, but spending three-hours on the road was not unusual. While the publication recently had an editor and a writer working from home in New York, I was told that I could not work from home – ever.
I left my last two jobs, as senior writer at alternative weekly LA CityBeat, and as staff writer at Ciudad magazine, sister publication of the mighty Los Angeles magazine and Texas Monthly, on good terms and with great clips. My point here is that, while Entrepreneur can claim that I did not fit into its culture of mediocrity, something I’d be happy to concede, it cannot state with any veracity that I did not carry out my duties as a staff writer. They put my work on the cover five times since I started there in September. (See some examples at
my site). Given advance deadlines, I was eligible to write seven covers in my time at the magazine. Five out of seven isn’t bad. I stand by everything that went under my byline there, too, and I’m proud of my output and ability, again and again, to take on last-minute assignments from a wishy washy leadership and turn them around without breaking a sweat.
The real reason behind my termination was editor-in-chief Amy Cosper’s growing distaste for the presence of a knowing soul. It seemed like every time she saw my face she was looking in a mirror that reflects her own deceitfulness. You see, to call Cosper a journalist would be a stretch. Her own, official bio at
Entrepreneur.com boasts that her previous claim to fame was the job of “entrepreneur-in-residence” at WiesnerMedia, a C-level magazine publisher whose titles include the stellar ColoradoBIZ and Trucking Times. In her bio, Cosper states that, while at Wiesner, “she solicited and evaluated new business plans, ventures and partnerships to drive the company’s initiative to diversify its portfolio.” I'm not sure what that means, but there’s not a word about being a journalist.
For good reason: During my experience at Entrepeneur, Cosper could not be bothered to make many assignments, read much copy, edit many sentences or manage many staff members. She once told an incoming editor to find out what the folks back in the cubicles did. This was after she had spent more than half a year at the mag. These were her people – her responsibility. She sometimes asked me and the other staff writer what we were working on, and what deadlines we had -- even when she was the only editor left at the mag. She didn't know what we were doing! She didn't give us deadlines! Ever! Recently I scored an interview with Mark Burnett, the reality TV king who's producing a series about entrepreneurs. Cosper told me to put it on the blog. Apparently she was too busy to edit it for a mag or web feature. So it got buried among daily posts.
In one springtime incident witnessed by another editor who is now also departed, a folder containing a printed-out story headed for the editing rounds for its first time -- it was virgin copy -- had already been signed off multiple times by Cosper. I lost count how many times I pitched stories – Dov Charney, the new (entrepreneurial) economy, the iPhone app bonanza, the impending entrepreneurial run on Cuba, the rise of alternative carmakers such as Fisker (based in the same town as Entrepreneur – Irvine, California) – that did not register or that were turned down outright. Those stories ended up being subsequently covered in the likes of Wired, Portfolio and Forbes. Even when I would show her a Forbes cover story that I had pitched long ago, she had a so-what response. On iPhone apps, Cosper later got it, but only after similar stories had appeared in competitors such as Inc. and Fast Company – and a few months after I finally went ahead and penned
a piece for Entrepreneur’s own website.
Another example of Cosper’s detached character: At a staff lunch in June, I mentioned a story I had done for the magazine – published earlier this year – about the growing business of personal gene testing. Her face was blank again. What story, she asked. I had to explain it to her. It was news to her. This was a story that appeared in HER magazine!
When I was hired I was fresh from a job at one of the most respected magazine companies, Emmis Publishing, in the land. Anyone with a clue in the glossy business knows Emmis and how, for example, its titles Texas Monthly and Los Angeles are perennial winners and finalists at the National Magazine Awards. This was another fact lost on Cosper, as she concluded that my experience painted me as more of an online and news writer and, thus, I would be working more for the web during my tenure. A much younger reporter with virtually no magazine experience would be used more for print, I was told. I was dumbfounded. I’m pretty sure, at this point, that she didn’t read my clips before hiring me. I proved her assessment wrong (I, in fact, did it all – covers, inside stories, online features and blog posts), and as recently as June Cosper sung my praises in front of the entire staff.
In early April she hired a real journalist, award-winning magazine veteran
Mike Kessler, as her new second-in-command. I was excited, as were my fellow staffers, some of whom I helped train in the basics of journalism -- if only by example. Kessler, a National Magazine Award finalist whose work has appeared in
The Best American Magazine Writing, made quick work of the previously chaotic editorial process and soon had me doing some of my best work there (the July split-covers of Entrepreneur are both mine, and both are results of my work with Kessler). He helped Cosper weed out some of those cubicle dwellers who either did nothing, or didn’t have a clue. (One now-departed editor once told me that as long as a subject’s publicist was okay with it, a disputed fact goes their way, regardless of the evidence). Kessler cleaned the place up even as Cosper continually lied to him: She said he wouldn't have to deal with the sales side of Entrepreneur; he did. She said the magazine was a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors. It wasn't.
I am told I was never considered for layoffs at the time. To the contrary, I was praised by Cosper. After that round of spring cleaning shed the executive editor, managing editor and a few others, the layers between Cosper’s schizophrenia and me started to shrink. At the end of his second month there, Kessler issued an ultimatum to Entrepreneur’s ownership: Cosper wasn’t carrying out the duties of an editor-in-chief, and he was. They could give him a raise, or make her do her work. (In his presence, Cosper scanned over Kessler's 800-word memo in 15-seconds; she originally told him she could reallocate some money to meet his demands, but later recanted). In his final letter to the magazine’s publisher, Ryan Shea, Kessler wrote the following (repeated here with his blessing):
Amy lacks the, honesty, leadership qualities, and trustworthiness to be the editor in chief of a national consumer glossy. She may very well lack the skill, too ... She is completely uninvolved until the last moment of production … From day one, I watched Amy talk out of both sides of her mouth, telling me, and you, and others, what they wanted to hear. For example, she assured me during the interview process that I would never be required to work with the advertising side in any capacity ... As a leader, Amy is completely unavailable. Her staff fears her, and believes that she unfit for leadership. They are right. ... Amy refuses to read memos or see the art and edit through from inception to fruition, which she describes to me as "micro-managing.” (I told her it's actually called "editor-in-chiefing.") I think the quality of the magazine is a testament to Amy's lack of leadership. She introduced a mediocre redesign and put out a few decent covers, but eight months into her job, the overall quality would be an embarrassment to any respectable editor-in-chief of a magazine as huge and important as Entrepreneur. I was in Kessler’s office, with the door closed, when Cosper walked over to have her final words with him. Since that day, I’ve been private enemy number one. My stories always seemed to elicit a nice one from Cosper – even though she was responding via Blackberry within minutes of me filing (not possibly enough time to read them, especially on such a small device). My pieces were soon met with “needs work” -- just as fast. Two well-reported stories were held without explanation. I was called into her office three times in the last two months to explain things I had said about the magazine to coworkers. I explained that the staff was so young and inexperienced they didn’t know how things were supposed to work. I said she was lucky to have me so that some of the younger journalists there – one actually asked me how to take notes – could get free training. I told them how things should be. Stop it, I was told.
On June 25, news of the last mass staff exodus had hit the FishbowlLA and FishbowlNY blogs. Nearly the entire print editorial staff, save for a franchise (special issue) editor had asked to be laid off with severance. That week Cosper had held a meeting in her office and stated that if anyone else is unhappy they're free to go too. (Way to rally the troops: Two others, including a web editor, took her up of the offer). A few weeks later two art direction assistants took off as well. One of them, a young man in his 20s, was asked by Cosper why he was leaving a national magazine for a third-tier city/regional. The pay is better, he said, and it seemed like the people there cared. They're more like family, he said. At that point, the print magazine’s editorial staff consisted of Cosper, the franchise editor, the art director and an assistant art director. (The other staff writer and myself technically worked for the web, although we contributed to print). This is for a 600,000-circulation national magazine that wants to steal advertisers from far superior publications such as Fast Company and Inc. Everyone near Cosper had gone running for the hills. The young editors were frustrated with having to do her work with little direction or leadership, only to face her rants when the printed product was shipped to the office. Cosper was left to hunt for someone to do her job for her. With such a revolving door, the company was a relatively big advertiser at Media Bistro. After one candidate came through and didn't end up attached to the magazine, Cosper blurted out, exasperated, something like, "No more newspaper people. The talent pool around here sucks." Of course that's not true. There are many good journalists are out of work in Southern California. But Entrepreneur's idea of talent is someone who kisses ass and does work without question. Those aren't job requirments that go down well with most journos, especially ones that are going to be running a magazine.
Cosper's M.O., as any of these editors would attest (had they not signed non-disclosure agreements, which I did not), was to create fires and put them out. When Shea complained about the magazine's design, Cosper asked Kessler to supervise the art director -- a woman who happened to be Cosper's longtime friend, and her hire. The next day Cosper skipped work to go motorcycle riding. Her two-hour gym breaks were notorious, as were her 5-on-the-dot exits. One editor noted how Cosper was enlisted to create an advertorial package for a huge advertiser, UPS, but threw it on the underling’s lap long after deadline. Cosper had more pressing fires to put out. Do the company's owners know, the editor asked me, that their editor-in-chief was so irreverent when it came to core elements of their business? She also liked to hire people that she believed could be pushed around, as if a saleswoman is any match for journalists with any seasoning. She once described a position she planned to create, an editor in charge of web content, as "my bitch." The position has since been filled.
Meanwhile, in the media blogs, Shea had blamed editors loyal to Cosper’s predecessor for the late-June exodus, but as FishbowlNY later
noted, that’s not true, because at least some of those who left had never even met the earlier editor-in-chief. In fact, after a long-departed Kessler fired off an I-told-you-so to Shea regarding the latest exodus, the publisher blamed Kessler for the departures. Clearly, the blame game is an art form at Entrepreneur. Somehow, though, even as Kessler accurately pointed out that Cosper doesn’t really begin to do the job of editor-in-chief, Shea and his family, which owns the publication, continued to back her. In fact, during those lean times in May and June, Cosper had the magazine freelance edited, ostensibly at considerable expense. She even called a freelance copy editor Kessler hired to find out how the editorial process works; she had lost her staff and was clueless about how the magazine she edits is actually put together. She lucked out, though, because the mag’s assignments were on cruise control based on work that Kessler had done months ago, including a slate of upcoming cover stories (Tony Hawk by Pulitzer finalist Gary Cohn and Russell Simmons by Inc. contributor and former New York Times editor Josh Dean). None the wiser, she continued to badmouth Kessler.
On June 26, Cosper and I had a final, contentious, closed-door meeting in her office. As comments to the
FishbowlNY post rolled in that morning, she was obviously angry. During the meeting, she seemed to become more and more agitated. I never backed down (another no-no at a place that hires the young and inexperienced and is used to bullying its employees). I told her ever since Kessler left she's been gunning for me. She blew up. "Kessler! Kessler!" she yelled. "I know you’ve been IMing Kessler," she said, clutching a pile of printouts. Stop IMing Mike Kessler, she said. I was aghast. Not only was I prohibited from communicating with a former editor I was previously required to answer to, often via IM, but the company was spying on my private IMs. I told her that I was amazed that this company couldn’t make it a priority to subscribe to Lexis-Nexis research services but has the resources to spy on employees.
I had become the problem. I was asked to explain why I had been speaking ill of an incoming editor -- an editor as it turns out once again, who is saving the day as we speak. Cosper said she heard I had said she is not qualified. This was not the case, I explained. All I had done was corrected Cosper’s repeated reference to her as a former Los Angeles Times Magazine managing editor, which is not true. I said she’s a former Times features editor, not a former Times magazine managing editor, and that an ex-boss of mine who had worked at the Times, including as a top editor at the paper’s magazine, vouched for her. The facts often get lost with Cosper, and I doubt my version of events was related to the new editor. If anything, the false notion that I badmouthed the incoming editor might have worked in Cosper’s favor, as she clearly wouldn’t want a repeat of Kessler. What, two qualified journalists, working together? Lord knows what would happen. We might have even put out a good magazine. At that last meeting, I told Cosper that we had spent more time talking about rumors and innuendo than we have about story ideas and doing good journalism. Strangely, she agreed.
That June day I began to pack my things in anticipation of what was to come. The last straw, I believe, was an IM I sent to a coworker Friday noting the promotion of an employee whose abilities no one at the magazine – apparently not even Cosper – respects. (I once described him as “a monkey with a keyboard” to Cosper’s face, and she did not refute it). In the IM, I stated that I had asked for a promotion in writing. I wondered, I continued, how the company would justify in court promoting him, an under-qualified white man, over me, a journalist of color with 20 years of often top-line experience. Shortly after 4 p.m. Friday I was called upstairs, given some paperwork to sign (I refused to sign one document) and told to pack up. An executive kept eyes on me the whole time I grabbed my belongings, but I was fast: I had already prepared. I suspect they’ve saved other IMs for ammunition. I think that reflects more on them than I: This says volumes about a company’s priorities. It can’t put out a cleanly edited, well-designed magazine for a readership it clearly peddles to advertisers as high-end, but it can spy on its employees.
In those last two contentious months, when barely anyone was left in the office to run the magazine (see my photos), Cosper went on vacation once, and spent the better part of two additional weeks out of town. It doesn’t seem like responsible editor-in-chief behavior, especially as the new second-in-command was left holding the bag that contained last-minute editing and assigning. But, as has been made clear here, Cosper’s no ordinary editor-in-chief. In fact, she goes out on sales calls with the publisher. She helps to sell ads! She sets up editorial packages that advertisers can frame their pitches around. In fact, when I mentioned the idea of covering Fisker Automotive for the final time, she said we can’t do it: Porsche was sponsoring the standing feature I was pitching to. The Germans, she said, might not like it. Later I learned that Cosper was actually shilling for an even more "intrusive" ad campaign by the sportscar maker. When other editors noted that the ads could cross the line with editorial and make the mag ineligible for National Magazine Awards, she said she'd rather earn the ad money than get an award.
And herein lies the bottom line. Entrepreneur’s owners don’t like journalism. The publication’s record of having a revolving door, of hiring malleable, inexperienced newcomers (except when its editor-in-chief obviously doesn’t know who she’s hiring), of making the place hostile for the diverse and outspoken, and of continually putting out a mediocre product, shows that it’s not at all about journalism. In a staff meeting earlier in the year, the publisher himself swatted down my suggestion that the company website become a daily news portal for entrepreneurs – the better for those startup owners to keep coming back as their businesses developed and they no longer needed our basic, how-to content. He said that Entrepreneur’s bread-and-butter is “take-away” stories for the startup hopeful. In other words, the magazine’s staple includes those five-ways-to-start-a-business pieces that appeal only to those ignorant enough to believe that a staff of inexperienced journalists could tell them how to start and run a business. In encouraging more feature-like profiles of successful business owners (like the recent cover
Q&A I did with Patron’s John Paul DeJoria), I later joked to fellow staffers that if I knew the five easiest businesses to start in a recession, would I be here? (I was told, after penning cover stories about the surfing and mixed martial arts industries, that we were doing too many pop culture stories and that we needed to return to the “take-away”).
Selling readers and advertisers the notion that Entrepreneur’s staff editors and writers know the ins and outs of starting and maintaining a business is almost fraudulent. Some of the company’s employees and leaders haven’t even graduated from college. One web editor can barely write a sentence (“He's turned himself into a living, breathing, kick-flipping commodity--one that's become so wildly successful that it's hard for some to tell where [Ryan] Sheckler the skater ends and Sheckler the brand begins--and vice versa,” he once wrote). And here’s the thing: While the mag aims at those ignorant enough to believe that these “take-away” stories give them something that they can’t get in Fast Company, it fails to retain those educated, successful business-owning readers by giving them savvy, in-depth journalism, in my opinion. But which of those two audiences do you think those big-name advertisers (UPS, Porsche, American Express) crave: Cletus the Slack-Jawed Business Hopeful? Or the woman with a hi-tech startup and 30 employees? Do you think there’s anything in Entrepreneur or Entrepreneur.com she doesn’t already know (or know better)?
So, essentially, Entrepreneur is hostile to journalism because it costs money and requires tolerance of diverse, smart, and educated people. At the same time, there’s a sleight of hand: Entrepreneur’s owners crave those advertisers that crave educated, savvy and demanding readers. How they connect the dots between dumbed-down “take-away” stories for people who haven’t the slightest notion of business, and a moneyed advertising base keen on the educated and affluent, is pure salesmanship.
Having a saleswoman with the title of editor-in-chief fits perfectly. A fox is watching over the henhouse, and Entrepreneur’s owners are comfortable with that. As long as they own the place, they will forever refuse to hire a real journalist as an editor-in-chief. Who would go on sales calls? Who would help sandwich editorial with ad packages? Who would be there to validate their utterly non-journalistic view that publishing “take-away” stories is the way to go? Who would nod in agreement that what the magazine – which still uses clip art and which, until last year, was physically cut-and-pasted for layout – really needs is more five-ways-to-do-a-business stories? Entrepreneur exists in the Shea family’s likeness.
That’s fine. I’m going to surprise you here: I own a magazine, I run it my way -- and I could really care less what you think. This is America. I’m 100 percent with that. America! But what’s hard to swallow is the constant bullshit: that I was fired because I wasn’t carrying out duties; that the magazine is improving and hiring better and better journalists; that it’s owners are comfortable with real journalists instead of some of the utter tards it entrusts as content managers; that it's serving up the kind of smart, successful readers its advertisers crave. Those are lies. The owners have every right to have a mediocre magazine. But say it loud and proud: We don’t like quality content or the uppity people who make it. It’s not our thing. There almost seems to be perverse pleasure in the way the owners jerk around journalists, constantly hiring and firing their way through bad press and worse content. But to think they can burn through good people like Kessler and I (and I suspect there will be more) without blow-back is a pipe dream. For Cosper to think that she can come from a small media market and pull the wool over people's eyes in the second largest media market in the nation is pure fantasy. She's in the big leagues, but she's small-town all the way. I'll be doing what I do long after she's gone.
Hopefully that will be soon. Managers inside Entrepreneur have admitted to me that the magazine loses money, and that the website, along with other ventures such as licensing the Entrepreneur name to publishers in other countries, and printing how-to books, apparently make money. Cosper once told me I should get with her program because Entrepreneur would be “the last business mag standing.” Like everything she’s said, I found it quite hard to believe.
I love this. I write below that Entrepreneur magazine's editor-in-chief didn't do her job, lied, dropped the ball with at least one advertiser, once wasn't aware of what was in her own magazine, passed up story ideas that ended up in Forbes, Wired and Portfolio, hired people whose skills she wasn't fully clear about, and signed off on edits that weren't even made yet. I write that Entrepreneur, a national title with 600,000-circulation, lost at least one editorial staffer to a third-tier city/regional giveaway because it pays better. I write that when I told Cosper a person she was promoting was "a monkey with a keyboard" she did not refute it. And publisher Ryan Shea, whose response to the editorial staff's June exodus was verbose (and poorly thought out, because it opened up a flood of comments) has practically nothing to say. No denials.
