The Houston Press has a really interesting investigative piece on the underbelly of the magazine publishing business where "just a slight bump in circulation can mean serious money" to the magazines-- a bump provided by problematic and vulnerable "agents" in their late teens and early twenties looking to escape whatever it is are recruited by Fagin-like managers to join their crews who peddle magazine subscriptions door-to-door from city-to-city to "Joneses," what they call customers. When not canvassing neighborhoods with various "spiels," "a school-spiel, cancer-spiel, you name it"--anything to sign up a Jones for a subscription--they party hard often with drugs thanks to their managers. As the Press writes, what follows "is a story of that collateral damage — of murder, rape, assault, overdoses and scamming — and the business decisions and lack of legislation that make it possible."
It's been a tough hop for this caravan of sales crews, though. Winding their way down from California, they lost a few agents. Two were arrested in Albuquerque after they allegedly forced their way into the home of an elderly couple and beat them to death, raping the wife first. A few weeks later, another agent allegedly raped a woman in Claremont, California, so he got picked up, too. Then, in West Texas, a van flipped, killing one agent and injuring three others. That's seven agents out of commission. That's about a $2,800 loss per day.
Read more here.
[Via]