a360
- One of the world's largest magazine publishers needed to produce content-packed, highly engaging, 100-page magazines on a continuous basis under tight timelines. To meet their needs, we crafted an ingenious process for creating an all-new, original, high-quality magazine every week.
a360 Media is a large publishing conglomerate, publishing a wide range of weekly magazines including Us Weekly and In Touch. They also produce newsstand standalone magazines called SIPs (Special Interest Publications). These 100-page, ad-free titles each cover a single topic, from puppy parenting to no-cook meals to off-the-beaten-path travel. a360 produces hundreds of these titles each year, and needs vendors who can publish excellent SIPs on a tight timeline. So they turned to Teamstream Productions.
In the five years since we began our partnership with a360, Teamstream has produced more than 70 SIPs, utilizing a unique all-remote production process we developed specifically for this engagement. Each SIP takes four calendar weeks to create, but our parallel processing system allows us to produce a new complete issue every week on a rolling basis. Utilizing emerging tools like generative AI, plagiarism checkers, and collaboration software, we produce reliably excellent content every week, while staying on schedule and on budget—a rare bright spot in the tumultuous world of magazine publishing.
Many Teamstreamers are veteran magazine people—some of our team members have worked in print journalism for decades—bringing invaluable expertise that helps us expertly cover a dizzying range of topics. Where the required expertise isn’t in-house, Teamstream’s model lets us quickly bring in the expertise we need. For an SIP featuring modern retellings of familiar Bible stories, we brought in a reverend to get the theology right; for our many original-recipe issues, we bring on a dedicated recipe editor to ensure the recipes we produce are easy to follow (and delicious, and so on). Ten years ago, a staff of 30 people might produce a magazine in a month; at Teamstream, we produce that magazine with fewer than 10 people, all working on additional issues simultaneously. This long-term partnership with a360 showcases Teamstream’s ability to dig in, determine what’s needed and then fulfill it—time and time again.