San Diego Magazine / August 2005 / Moving on Up

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Moving on Up

ALL IS WELL. Actually, we’ve never been better. On June 27, the news hit that San Diego Magazine had been purchased by CurtCo Publishing. The Malibu-based company publishes a number of national and regional titles. In 2004, CurtCo bought Sarasota and Naples, Florida–based Gulfshore Life regional magazines. Business-oriented Worth is also among the company’s national publications.

You’re probably most familiar with CurtCo’s Robb Report, which serves the national ultra-luxury market. To say Robb Report epitomizes an affluent lifestyle is as obvious as the fact that Tom Cruise misjudged the value of his former publicist.

When we heard Robb Report’s parent company was buying us, some wondered if the deal would mean we’d have our water cooler replaced by hot and cold running champagne. Or if the kitchen vending machines would give way to a seafood buffet. Alas, not yet.

But it’s important to note how employees here found out about the sale. We were told about it before it happened. CurtCo Publishing CEO William Curtis, working with San Diego Magazine Publishing Company president and CEO Jim Fitzpatrick, called us all together. We were told a deal was in the works. Nobody panicked. Everybody’s job was going to be safe. It was a class move. And one that seems indicative of everybody involved.

BUT WAIT. There’s more news to catch up on. Some months before we were bought, San Diego Magazine gained a new publisher. Maureen Sullivan had been our magazine’s general manager. Before that, she’d been in senior management positions at Alliance Employment Solutions (as CEO), Manpower San Diego and Mail Boxes Etc. Global Headquarters.

A native Bostonian, Sullivan has been in the clouds ever since the Red Sox reversed the curse and won the 2004 World Series. Don’t even ask her about New England’s latest Super Bowl.

She’s been an extremely positive addition to our workplace. Her professionalism is both obvious and intangible in a multitude of ways we do business. And her seamless leap to the top of our masthead will seemingly mirror San Diego Magazine’s transition into the expanding CurtCo family.

“Very little is going to change in terms of the benefits readers already get out of our magazine,” says Sullivan. “We’ll still be in mailboxes and on newsstands every month. And if a little Robb Report rubs off on us, that’s a great thing.”

Now about that seafood buffet . . .

Ron Donoho
Executive Editor

© 2006 San Diego Magazine