I learned so much," she says of the now-defunct publication. While there weren't any openings at Penthouse when she graduated from UD, Zamkoff was offered an editorial assistant's job at the online science and technology magazine, Omni, which was owned by Penthouse's parent company, General Media International."I stayed at Omni for 11 months and it was a great first job. Still, she submitted her edited version, and Bloch was pleased with her work."From there, the opportunities just grew," she says. I knew this was a famous journalist, but I thought, 'This isn't very well written.what's going on here?'" she recalls. She was soon asked to edit a story by a prominent foreign correspondent who, she later learned, has a reputation of being a better reporter than a writer."I made all these changes to his story, so I was second guessing myself. It was terrible." But, her eagerness to learn led Penthouse's chief editor, Peter Bloch, to offer her a column to edit. "I spent many hours cleaning out filing cabinets. "I was a cleaning lady for a week," she jokes. The fact it was at Penthouse was secondary."Her first week as an intern, however, left Zamkoff feeling bored and out of place. And, to be honest, back then, my first concern was getting a job. "I was expecting the same thing when I was first interviewed. I think a lot of people expect to find naked women walking around or nude pictures hanging on the walls," Zamkoff says. "People often ask me what the office is like. To Zamkoff, it was a way to break into big-time magazine journalism. "I thought The Review was the best 'classroom' I had ever been in, even though it wasn't a class at all."Still, Zamkoff says, she "needed more help to break into journalism." She applied to several magazines, including New York City-based Penthouse, which offered her a paid summer internship in 1995, between her junior and senior years. "By the time I was a junior, I was looking for journalism internships," she recalls. In fact, she met her fiance, Craig Black, AS '96, while working there. Zamkoff was soon on the staff of The Review, UD's student-run newspaper, working in various capacities as a columnist, reporter and editor. But, before long, she discovered a natural talent for interviewing people and writing. Zamkoff, a native of East Brunswick, N.J., came to the University of Delaware planning to major in psychology on her way to becoming a grief counselor. Working at Penthouse has been a wonderful experience." This is not a schlocky publication and it's not anything I'm embarrassed to be associated with. "But, there's also wonderful, cutting-edge editorial content. "Is it pornography? Sure, parts of it," she says. Nowadays, Zamkoff's magazine, Penthouse, is more often called by another name. But, Alyson Zamkoff, AS '96, isn't at all embarrassed that she's celebrating her first full year as managing editor of what, in the old days, would have been referred to as a "girlie" magazine. She's used to the raised eyebrows, the questions and the curiosity. A penthouse view Volume 9, Number 4, 2000
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