A brief history some might find tedious, but which importantly roots my statements (to come) in other “biopsy” entries
[Here, unlike in other entries on similar or related business, I use the term “medical-media” (instead of “med-media”) as a generic term for medical advertising and promotional agencies, as well as—fitting the groping job-getting approach I took in the mid-1990s—other types of media firms related to medicine, such a small publishers. But after this blog entry, “med-media” or “medical-media” firms will tend to refer to advertising and promotional firms. Though since the 1990s I have worked for one pharmaceutical company and for a few medical-publishing-related companies, my statements to some extent here and definitely in other blog entries that are related to the theme “health-care industry biopsy” have to do with medical advertising and promotional agencies, which are a category unto themselves in terms of how they see themselves and operate and in terms of how someone like myself, no strong ally of them, sees them.
[Also, the below narrative may seem a bit of a hair shirt to get through, but obviously it is a very boiled-down account of a long, complex, at times tiring and/or frustrating process—like a few-paragraph account of someone’s punishing slog on the Long March in China in the 1930s. Also, though enticing hints about the company later called CommonHealth pop up here, these are by no means intended to be definitive or particularly deep; there is much more incisive stuff to be mined from my later and over-years experience with that company. But the later accounts, if/when made and to be made available per a very carefully worked out criterion for squaring with confidentiality strictures as well as other key considerations, would present very convincing and unambiguous characterizations, which would put the below-presented early perceptions of the 1990s in a light as being “early clues as to what would later be much more obvious.”]
It’s funny how your thumbnail-sketch memories of a time that is fading into the past seem so much on target, but when you look again at records of the details, some old facts are readily remember-able and others are less so. I would have said it was tough to make the transition from staff editor, as I was from August 1990 through February 1994, to freelancer, which really only got underway with much continuity in 1997. What happened in all of two years from about mid-1994 to late 1996?
Actually, there was a long, slow process of sending speculative resumes to many employers, some to the same employer several times over a few years, similarly to what I’d done to get my 1990-94 jobs. Now I see how complex the process was—and I remember more of it than I expected, including its onerous side. So when I have said that medical-media types who come into their industry young and untested didn’t walk much of a walk to get there, I wasn’t joking.
I also see how naïve I was to apply to certain places. I see, too, how the aloofness and unavailing quality of some targets of applications were then, judging from lack of response (or employers’ lack of interest after I interviewed with them). This aloofness was harder to anticipate than you would think the corresponding tendency is today, where so much seeking work is done online, and your online evidence (LinkedIn page, debris available on a Google search, etc.) can turn people off you as was not possible in 1995. On one level, 17 years ago, certain media employers could be aloof by simply not responding, or being highhanded in the particular way they sought applicants via classified ads and the like; today, they can be aloof by requiring online applications, via which a weird bunch of unseen and un-anticipatable hoops to get through can be unavailing in their own way.
Another pattern that emerges is more unique to me: while numerous people I’ve encountered—some younger than I—started in the medical-media industry in the 1990s, some as early as the early 1990s, my own participation in that area didn’t start until 2001. But what I accumulated in the 1990s, as they did not, was a lot of experience in more traditional media areas—newspapers, magazines, educational and reference books—that meant dealing with a high volume of copy, and needing to know complex rules that differed a lot between employers. And I also learned from the way you were handled—valued for what value you must bring to the product, but paid low, and sometimes treated like dreck regardless—and of course this differed from the medical-media style: valued for how you would fit into their business plan, in a way your personal effort could not (necessarily) have much control over.
These are generalizations. Let’s look at details.
When I worked at AB Bookman from February 1992 through January 1993, I applied steadily, to a range of types of places, and knew I must work somewhere out of Sussex County Ferguson
Later, with other applications in between, I applied to Clinicians Publishing Group on November 23, 1992 (probably answering an ad); I had applied to them before. This time I got called to an interview—oddly, to me (in terms of mood, mainly), between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was offered the job (after Christmas, if I recall). I worked there for 13 months or so—and the rest was history (for me).
Through all this history, keep in mind: I didn’t simply apply to the places I name here, but I mention them because they are relevant to my theme of medical advertising or they are places I actually eventually worked at. Through the 1990s, as inefficient as it may sound, it was still essential to my career that I applied to many places almost all the time, hundreds per year, with many tries to the same places, spaced over time; I think in about 1999, I found that, over about a decade, I’d applied (usually meaning sent a query letter with resume and, often, a work sample) well over a thousand times (including many repeats, and many with not terribly high likelihood of eliciting a response).
Trying medical media as seemingly a new avenue I was qualified for
Once my days at CPG started looking numbered, I probably was more apt to apply for medical media firms, to exploit my experience (and work samples) from CPG. I applied (while still at CPG) to Integrated Communications Corp., with Nancy Sivartsen the contact, on January 4, 1994—and again on March 17, 1994 (after I was fired from CPG). With the second try, I got a call for an interview. I still remember something about that. She seemed to take me seriously to some appreciable extent. But she didn’t hire me. I would retry her with more query letters with resume over the next few years. (Interestingly, ICC was one place I never was put to work at after, in 2001, I started working at medical media firms via a placement agency. Also, I finally met Nancy
I applied to Reed Reference Publishing on April 18, 1994 (was this the first time?). I didn’t actually work for them until fall 1995, after I had applied in September 1995 or so—maybe not the first time since April 1994. More history (in my life) would be made (from October 1995 through March 1996).
I applied again to ICC, again addressing Nancy Montvale , N.J.
Despite my experience, not easily allowed in the “medical-ad door”
Overall, I felt that my CPG time should have earned me a chance at medical editing again, however much I’d felt shamed and discredited with how my job ended there; yet I “decidedly” found that it wasn’t getting me into the door of any sort of medically-oriented media firms as readily as I would have liked (or required to meet my financial needs). This plus the sheer frustration of getting promising interviews for media firms of whatever type means that the period of about mid-1994 through later 1996 was a strangely straining time, spread over months and months—and I wasn’t dilettantish, I wasn’t being lazy; I had bills to pay (such as car payments). And even then, as much as I stepped up applications and developed a certain hardness or “cynicism” about certain instances and methods of it, I generally looked to each application seriously, as if it could or should really lead to something. But despite this, the slow results were pretty wearing. (Thus it was all the more a miracle when freelance work started flowing steadily in 1997.)
So in the mid-1990s, not only was I slow to get my foot in the door of medical-media firms due to conditions not all in my control, but I did a lot of walking—through applications, waiting—as well as shoveling a lot of work once I got it. Consider my AAC and AB work—about 8 million words of work. CPG was 600,000. All that shoveling—and still no chance at medical advertising (though I did not know, and could not, how little that kind of high-volume shoveling was valued at the medical-advertising firms I would eventually work at).
And one of the big ironies came in early 1994, when I spoke to Louise Asper of Horizon Graphics and she said I needed three full references, which I could not supply at the time. “We can be kind of held liable,” she explained as a possibility that could arise if I didn’t have the references, which I found rather preposterous then and see much more so now. So no work through them yet. (I would get work through them starting in 2001, when I finally had the three references—courtesy of the reference and educational areas of publishing. Then the successor to Horizon in terms of who its principals were, “The Gary Laverne Group,” would collapse in 2007 after being in business only about seven years.)
The tiny beginnings of my experience with CommonHealth
So you could say that, pre-Internet, with mail being my primary way of scouting up work (and interestingly, even today, I get more responses or communications about possible work in response to my mailings than I do via my LinkedIn page!), progress was slow, and medical media was not a very promising area for me by about 1996.
The first medical-advertising place I was interviewed at, aside from ICC in 1994, that actually augured something of what I would experience in 2001-10, was Ferguson 2000, a branch of what I would later appreciate was CommonHealth, a confederation of originally small, independent agencies that was slowly transforming itself into a large corporation. I interviewed here in March 1995, while I was working at my one main stint of non-publishing work in the 1990s, MetLife (through a temp agency). Two women interviewed me, a young one and a middle-aged one (the latter whose name I remembered—Joan S.—as I would actually work with her when I worked at Noesis in May 2001, one of my first assignments through Horizon Graphics). I think there was a test they had me take. There was some sign they weren’t that interested in me. I might not have made as good an impression in the interview as I could have. I remember the women rather sniggering about me as I left (all the more interesting as Joan did not show such a snarky attitude toward me in 2001).
I think I remember the CommonHealth emblem on the wall, a “mandala” I think the company called it.
I was rather surprised at the smallness of the women for being apt to snigger about me. In long retrospect, this would make some sense as reflecting something of the culture of the company.
Other companies, more tries
In January 1996, I interviewed at Humana Press (which I also applied to several times over the years), with a John Eagleson, to whom I would send follow-up letters in subsequent years.
It appears from my records that Thomas Ferguson Associates advertised for a job with use of the New York Times mail boxes that were sometimes used by job advertisers. I applied, in February 1996. I don’t know if they hid their identity, as some such users did. (If you ask how I knew this ad was for Thomas Ferguson if it’s identity was hidden, it’s a long story how I knew, and would involve my diving back into old records…just take my word for it now.)
I interviewed at Gordon Publications (I think the name was then) in late May 1996 (this was another place I applied to several times). I actually interviewed there more than once over a number of years.
I tried The World Almanac (without knowing who it was that often advertised with only an address in the classifieds) in April 1996—that was another one I applied to numerous times (I was finally given work there starting in May 1998—ultimately three years’ worth, and very memorable—and a good place to work).
I sent another letter to Ferguson 2000 in July 1996 (I’m not sure if there was any between this date and when I interviewed in March 1995). I sent them another resume update in November 1996.
I did actually work for one firm that advertised every so often, and to which I applied several times, Montage Media; I worked sporadically there through 1996. I sent them a resume update, perhaps to trigger getting more freelance work, in late October 1996.
There was a firm called Dugan Valva Contess that I applied to at least in September 1996—they sent a letter in response, a practice that used to be not-uncommon among employers you sent resumes to, for which you were at least somewhat qualified, but which practice was becoming increasingly rare in the 1990s, and certainly did within the decade 2001-10. There was another firm, DFC as they identified themselves, which was in Upper Saddle River, N.J.; I applied there several times over a few years, too (I believe), and interviewed there one time, but never worked there. (Upper Saddle River, which seemed so far away when I interviewed at DFC, was where I would actually work for Prentice Hall starting in mid-1997.)
I would apply to Thomas Ferguson Associates again, with contact person Diane Smith, in August and October 1996.
It seems impressive to me how steadily I tried places again and again in 1995-96, some of which I eventually worked at in later years (though the cause-and-effect link between the full set of resumes sent to a given place over a lengthy period, and actually getting work there, was never so clear as was more of a gambling aspect to trying to get work at these places). Also, in retrospect, there is an interesting irony: many of the places that advertised, and to which I sent resumes, and at which I sometimes worked in the 1990s and early 2000s have gone out of business, or been bought up by different company, or been folded into another, fellow firm’s location: these include but are not limited to Troll Associates (where I worked in 1998), Montage Media, and Silver Burdett Ginn (for which I worked in 1999-2000 [see End note]).
What a lot of applying (and I haven’t mentioned the many other places, on which I kept a detailed log on pages and pages of three-ring paper). And does it seem it was so slow for me to get into medical media firms? And why? I didn’t lack for editing skills and experience. Looking back, I can say there was a species of aloofness to these firms that I didn’t quite apprehend or understand (unlike the species of aloofness I learned to recognize in more usual media firms such as I’d worked at). Were the medical-media firms preferring to hire editors of my technical sort only through placement agencies in the 1990s? That I had no way of knowing.
CommonHealth in the late 1990s to 2000; another “emblem” of the firm emerges
Without looking over my records, I’m not sure how many times I applied to CommonHealth branches in, say, 1998-2000 (to whatever extent I knew or suspected they were such branches, or whatever I felt the fact of being such a branch meant). But at least a couple times in 2000, I did write to the TFA building, though whether to TFA specifically I don’t know, which I also knew was a location of CommonHealth. One of their letters said, as such routinely did from them, that my skills didn’t match their needs, or such.
But another letter was refused by the addressee!—a woman in the human resources department. This was striking. I found later that she resigned a few days after my letter was returned. So, was she in a weird mood in her last days there? Was she ready to spit nickels? And, with all else, she would refuse the letter from the noodge who keeps writing?
Ironic, since I actually started working for CommonHealth the next year, and would do so off and on for most of a decade.
What saddens me when I review my correspondence from this time is one passage (in January 2000) that I routinely included in work-seeking letters in the late 1990s, which well reflected what work experience I had by then: “My total editorial experience is more than six and a half years’ worth, calculated as solid time of close to full-time hours. This extends over almost 10 years. This has involved not only writing but also proofreading and copy editing and other editorial handling of more than 11,250,000 words’ worth of material. In another respect this has involved more than 150 issues of magazines; more than 245 issues of community newspapers; and seven large, and a few smaller, nationally distributed books.”
It astonishes me how, by 2000, I tried to get into the types of work I did on this solid basis—which incidentally meant that I had accumulated a number of useful work samples—with the result that, almost a decade later, within which was much work for medical-media firms, I ended up (1) with very few work samples from the medical-media firms; (2) being treated like a reprobate in an unprecedentedly scandalous way in my experience; and (3) seeing a need to explain, for whoever, what is now about 20 years of editorial work as you see online.
So let’s see: of all these firms, CommonHealth showed some interesting stripes: smug women sniggering at me as I left an interview in 1995, and in 2000 an HR worker refusing a letter out of hand. These examples may seem minor and even ambiguous. But when we look at later developments in the following decade, we will think these early behaviors are harbingers of much clearer, much worse, and much more “company-culture-reflecting” behaviors to be seen over the long term. These early behaviors thus could be considered to reflect a more general company culture that I could not possibly read as such in 1995 or 2000, but which certainly look more so in retrospect.
End note
This may seem a complicated set of details, but it shows how tricky it can be to talk of these companies when so much changes with them due to shorter-term, more normal economics, or the broader, more cataclysmic economics of the 2008-and-after financial crisis. Located in Parsippany , N.J.
