My Formerly Glamorous Life as a Magazine Editor

Me at some event back when I was an editor at Tu Ciudad magazine. I wish I had those sunglasses.

I used to laugh anytime a movie about the magazine industry tried to capture the life I toiled in for over two decades. Yes, I was an actual magazine editor and it was decidedly unlike Runway magazine in The Devil Wears Prada, Poise in 13 Going on 30, or Composure in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. (What’s with the terrible magazine names?) Granted, I didn’t work as an editor at a fashion magazine like Vogue or InStyle, but I was a fashion editor a few times, and got my start interning at a women’s magazine in New York.

Actually, my story begins in New York, 3,000 miles from my east Los Angeles beginnings. (I’m from El Sereno, in the eastside of L.A., which is not to be confused with East L.A., a different neighborhood altogether.)

I was always good with words and writing. Check out my other blog post about some of this. But originally I wanted to be a screenwriter. What L.A. kid doesn’t? I applied to three colleges: USC was my backup, as was Columbia University (if I’m being honest). I knew I was destined to go to New York for college—I desperately needed to break out of my goodie Catholic school girlhood—and my heart was set on NYU. I had compiled all my pitiful, sad girl poetry, and I think some short stories and other writing samples, and sent them off with my application to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for its Dramatic Writing program.

Wouldn’t you know it, I got in. I also got into Columbia and USC (which my dad begged and tried bribing me to attend so that I wouldn’t leave home. Awww). I was ecstatic about NYU... until my financial aid package came in. It was nowhere near what Columbia was giving me to attend. I knew in that instant that my decision was made for me.

This was the first Roundtable I had cast when I was an awards editor at The Hollywood Reporter. Working on these gave me my first IMDB credits! I was very excited to have gotten J.Lo and Regina King for this. Kerry Washington sent me flowers with a hand-written thank you note.

I come from a lower middle-class background. My parents had four kids and they sent all of us to Catholic school because the public schools in El Sereno weren’t the best. My dad worked as a draftsman and later an architect (not officially because he never took those gnarly examinations), and my mother was a stay-at-home-mom, but you’d never know it (and better not ever call her that) by how much she worked and sewed out of our dining room for income. Her sewing paid for tuition, braces, tutors—you get the idea. When tuition was tough to cough up, my mom would barter with the school administrators for yard duty and other ways to keep us in school. She was amazing that way.

Anyway, money for school was always something my parents stressed about, so when I was applying to college it was a concern that I wasn’t applying to state schools. I knew I wouldn’t do well in those environments—the schools were too damn big. My friends who went to UCLA needed cars and mopeds just to get from class to class, which were often held in those arena-like classrooms. I knew I would flail if I had to do that. So I looked to smaller, private programs.

Not being able to afford NYU I begrudgingly chose Columbia. Anyone who hears me say that must think I’m an asshole. I do. I mean, like that was such a hard choice? Well at the time it was. NYU had accepted me for my writing. It was personal to me and validation of the path I had been on and wanted to keep pursuing.

The closest I could get to writing at Columbia was majoring in English. There was one, ONE, creative writing class offered and you had to submit work to gain admittance. I repeatedly got rejected by the instructor, Kenneth Koch. Instead, I took Prof. Koch’s Modern Poetry classes, which I enjoyed, but they were a pitiful consolation for not getting into his writing class.

In the ensuing years in college I took whatever other writing classes I could take at Columbia’s School of General Studies, where more options were offered. General Studies is like its adult college for people who went back for their BAs after whatever life breaks they needed to take. I remember one time I had a supermodel in a class. I and the two queens in my class almost fell out of our seats! She was stunning. I digress. 

One of the coolest things about being an editor at Vanity Fair was getting my mug illustrated for my byline credits. This illustration is based on a photo I sent the art department. Kinda looks like me.

I did well in these writing classes (Prof. Koch be damned!), experimenting with playwriting and journalism. It was in that latter class that I found a facility with writing to a broader, more general audience. I wrote a column about my experience as a Latina in a predominantly NOT Latino college that resonated with my professor, who urged me to get it published. Columbia’s alumni magazine ended up picking it up, and it later found an extended life in several college writing anthologies. Every once in a while someone finds me online and thanks me for the piece, which apparently spoke to them. That makes me happy, though I cringe at a few lines that have not stood the test of time.

Anyway, my success in that class propelled me to apply to journalism school for a master’s degree. I mean, what else was I going to do when I graduated with a BA in English literature? I got into Columbia’s Journalism school straight out of college and entered that program as a total deer-in-headlights. Most of my classmates had worked as actual journalists before attending. I was so green!

But again I excelled, eventually winning a magazine writing award at graduation. I worked at a women’s magazine under the amazing editorship of Betsey Carter before I was plucked by People magazine by an editor I had met at my j-school’s job fair; his name was Joe Treen. I still remember these editors who had such a tremendous impact on my career in the very beginning stages.

I worked at People magazine for three years, first in the news bureau, which was fairly entry-level. I didn’t get to write and report anything until year two and that was a doozy! One of my first assignments was to follow Leonardo DiCaprio to all the nightlife spots he visited in the wake of his heartthrob-status after Titanic came out. This included spending a cringy night at the Scores strip club, and another at whatever hot nightclub was impossible to get into at the time. This was Leo in the heights of his “pussy posse” phase, so you can imagine the debauchery we were covering. 

I also helped launch the Scoop section in the front of the magazine under the mentorship of O.G. journos Charlie Leerhsen and Larry Hackett. It’s crazy to think that at this time—we’re talking late 90s—magazines like People were still run by men even though women mostly read it. There was a woman managing editor who was a real ball-buster. We were all afraid of her. But at the morning meeting, where she sat at the head of a giant oval conference table, she was surrounded by a bunch of dudes in suits and just a smattering of women.

I got itchy to be doing more than I was at this early stage in my career—the hubris!—so I took a job launching Angeleno magazine in L.A., which required a move back home that I seriously questioned. Why move back to L.A. to be a magazine editor when the industry is in New York? But I had gotten the top editor spot for what turned out to be the worst job I’ve ever had. I’ll spare the details, but part of my learning curve was learning to be comfortable meeting fancy publicists in Beverly Hills for lunch meetings. Even though I grew up mere miles from BH, it was as foreign to me as to the midwesterners whose idea of BH came from Beverly Hills 90210 and Pretty Woman.

This is one of my favorite covers I worked on for Tu Ciudad magazine. For our music-themed issue we did a mod-inspired cover shoot with the singers from the Mexican band Kinky and the Latinx band Los Abandoned. My brother called in a favor from one of his old high school friends, who loaned us this prized white Vespa. We shot this cover in Venice Beach, which you can’t really tell.

It was also the first time I was in close proximity to celebrities and their handlers. This would be something I’d get used to very quickly. My magazine career would be mostly spent around celebrities of all stripes. It’s funny because you just get blase around them. They don’t care who you are, so you just don’t give them any mind. Also, for every nice celebrity there are two assholes making everyone’s lives miserable. 

After Angeleno I went to work as a fashion editor at a now-defunct magazine called Movieline. It was a movie-fan rag and I got to write cool articles about the convergence of fashion and costume design. I got to pull cool clothes and products for photo shoots, and work with stylists on our many cover and fashion shoots. During this time we shot Beyonce, Angelena Jolie, George Clooney, Mariah Carey, Heath Ledger (R.I.P.) , and a bunch of famous people I can’t even remember anymore. I would borrow diamond jewelry for photo shoots that required having a security guard son-set. As a fashion editor I would get front-row seats to L.A.’s version of fashion week, and I was always getting invited to the craziest, coolest parties. Companies like Nike and Nintnedo would throw these oversized extravaganzas and we’d leave with these insane goodie bags.

I used to drive a white New Beetle during this period, and I had such fun memories of speeding around L.A. in my bug with my editor girlfriends who worked at other publications. We’d complain if the goodie bag wasn’t up to snuff. What spoiled bitches we were back then.

Movieline segued to an awesome job at Variety, where I helped launch a glossy magazine called VLife that was the progenitor for what The Hollywood Reporter and Variety look like now. Back then, both of those entertainment trades were pretty raggedy. 

Renee Zellweger was VLife’s cover model for the debut issue and to this day she’s the nicest celebrity I’ve ever met. She showed up to set and introduced herself to everyone on the crew, asked our names, and shook our hands while looking us straight in the eyes. When the shoot was over, she walked around to all of us again and said her goodbyes, repeating our names to our faces. I can’t remember anyone’s name after I meet them. I was impressed that she did, and weeks later I was again impressed when her sweet dad called me on the phone to humbly ask if I could send copies of the magazine with her on the cover. I kept his thank you letter tacked to my cubicle wall for a while after that.

One of the craziest accomplishments while I was at The Hollywood Reporter was assembling what we called the “supporting actor class photo.” This meant wrangling these 30 T.V. supporting actors to come to a photo shoot on the same date and time and be photographed en masse like this. If you look closely, you’l see Ali Wong in there, Jay Ellis (who I was very excited to meet), Walter Goggins, Aubrey Plaza, Alfred Molina, Kal Penn, Johnny Flynn (light years before he became my favorite Mr. Knightley… he was very nice and unassuming), and Louie Anderson (R.I.P., who everyone was excited to meet, but none more than Jennifer Hudson, also in this pic). Everyone in this pic was a huge coup

From Variety I went to work at the best job I ever had, that of deputy editor at another startup magazine called Tu Ciuddad Los Angeles. It was a regional lifestyle magazine for L.A. Latinos and it was awesome. It was the first time I worked in a newsroom with almost all Latinos. We were a small but mighty team. Our audience LOVED us. Sadly, we were folded after nearly four years. The company that owned us was in the midwest and after every issue we’d get a copy sent back with a bunch of sticky notes from our editorial director with her “constructive feedback.” Some notes were helpful (not really), but mostly they were egregiously out of touch. For a story about Cinco de Mayo that we ran, she actually asked in a post-in note why we didn’t mention when Cinco de Mayo took place. Um...we couldn’t even with her.

After Tu Cidudad folded I tried leaving my magazine life behind by getting a degree in library science from Rutgers. My husband and I had recently married and moved to New Jersey for his job. I figured it was as good a time as any to start over doing something new. I loved books and I especially loved libraries. And I loved getting my MLIS degree. I was a straight-A student, I financed my degree with scholarship money, and I was invited to join the honor society, Phi Beta Mu. I had never done stuff like this at Columbia. I was too timid and insecure back then.

I dove into my MLIS program and looked longingly toward the future I was going to have helping patrons find books to love, or information to help their lives. Little did I know that after graduating and before I could get a job in a library I got a call from an old coworker friend who needed a magazine editor. Not having worked for a few years while I was in my grad program, I really needed a job and needed to be contributing to my little family, which at this point included my beautiful son, Salvador.

So we moved back to L.A. and I went back to the life I thought I had left behind, and worked as an editor once again. This time I specialized in awards content, so anything having to do with the Oscars and Emmys. I did this first for Deadline Hollywood, but then I got poached by The Hollywood Reporter, and, eventually Vanity Fair magazine, where my magazine career finally ended during a round of layoffs at parent company Conde Nast.

I did love being an awards editor. It meant tons more celebrity wrangling and glamorous stakes. I helped produce several amazing THR Roundtables, as well as some grade-A photo studios and photo essays. I worked in the press room backstage of the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars several times, wearing my black-tie best and capturing every big moment. I edited some amazing writers, worked alongside super talented photographers and graphic designers, and learned more than I ever thought I could at that point in my life from some fabulous editors in chief. 

I got to meet some of my screen idols like Rita Moreno, who I got to interview twice. I met my BIGGEST teenage crushes: Jason Bateman and Sean Astin. If you had told my 13-year-old self that I’d meet those two men as an adult I would have laughed in your face. But I did, and each man proved to be as charming as someone like me could hope. It validated the nights I spent longing for and making out with my pillow to thoughts of them.

It saddens me how the state of journalism has deteriorated. Being an editor is not what it used to be. That whirlwind life of expense accounts, long, fancy lunches, and gorgeous photoshoots are long gone.

When I consume content today it’s dismaying; there’s so much click bait and lazy journalism. When I see typos in print or online, or when a writer feels the need to unnecessarily insert themselves into a story I just shake my head.

I’m glad I belong to the old school, even if that does make me, frankly, old. I’m glad I got to see the glory days of amazing journalism. And I’m grateful as hell for the fabulously glamorous life I did live as a magazine editor. They were some of the greatest years of my life.

But today I’m in the midst of my new adventure, one that includes work-life balance with my awesome little family and a day job at the best art and design college in the country. I still get to write and edit stories, they’re just now about amazingly talented students and faculty and the ways in which their work impacts the world. OK, I’m getting a little breathy here, but the peace and confidence I have about my current line of work is a blessing. Maybe not as glamorous as before, but entirely more meaningful.