A LITTLE BIT ABOUT US

Company History

If you had been walking downtown in the summer of 1988, I might have handed you a copy of Working World magazine. Back then we were a small start-up and we distributed the magazine by “hand-passing” on busy Los Angeles street corners. My spots were 7th & Fig and the Bridge in Century City.

We don’t hand-pass the magazine anymore. Now, a network of 2,000 street-mounted newsracks distribute 100,000 copies of each issue every three weeks. If you’ve ever walked through the business districts of greater Los Angeles, you’ve undoubtedly seen our newsracks. They are either bright red or green with JOBS printed on the pedestal. Our circulation area covers Pasadena to Santa Monica, Long Beach to Woodland Hills. We are truly part of the cityscape.

I started the magazine from a studio apartment in Hollywood along with my then-husband. We were fresh out of college and had no money or experience, just an idea. The goal was to give the working people of Los Angeles a useful resource for finding a more inspiring job.

As our family started to grow, we brought them to work and changed diapers on light tables. The kids have been featured at various times on the covers of Working World magazine. They are now teenagers, and still come to the office to help out as needed.

In 2003, my husband and I divorced and Randy Goldring came onboard as company president. That year we expanded into the healthcare field with Working Nurse, a magazine and website for Registered Nurses. We now publish two websites 43 print magazines a year, and host 3 job fairs. Yep, we’re busy keeping the working people employed!

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the industry during the past 20 years. When we first started, fax machines had barely come on the market. Our customers would mail (I’m not kidding — snail mail) their ad copy and we would send it out to a typesetting house that printed the proofs that were waxed and laid down on art boards. These were photographed and made into plates for the printing press. Now the process is all digital and done in a mere fraction of the time.

In 1990, I bought my first Mac. It changed my life because we were now able to do our own layout of ads and editorial. The Mac IICX was huge and super expensive, but it did the trick. Thank you, Steve Jobs. Email rocked our world again because we no longer had to retype all the copy (can you imagine!). Digital photography was another breakthrough. Then the tsunami of change came with the internet, which allows quick and efficient job placement and search.

But whatever technological changes have taken place over the past 20 years, there’s one thing that remains constant:

the need for working people to find an inspiring job.

—Catherine Rhodes, Editor and Publisher