Wow, what a difference a year makes at GOOD. Around this time last year, we wrote how the media company, infused with cash from its “Pepsi Refresh” marketing project, was putting serious bucks into its editorial side. They had 19 job positions open. Several of those positions would later be filled by journalist Ann Friedman and the team she assembled to run GOOD magazine. Friedman’s tenure helming the mag was generally considered to be a major journalistic improvement over GOOD’s previous incarnations.

One year later, however, Friedman and her staff were let go, and it seems like the company has chosen to go in the complete opposite direction. Mediawire noticed that GOOD is once again hiring. But instead of journalists, this time around they’re looking for “content curators” and “brand apostles.”

From a business perspective, all of this makes a certain amount of sense. As we reported a year ago, GOOD was making a killing on the ever-expanding marketing side of its business. “We’re proud of the work that goes into the magazine,” GOOD founder Casey Caplowe told me, “but at this point it’s almost a side project.”

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Photo: Good co-founder Casey Caplowe

In this day and age, an open job at a media company–any open job–tends to draw the intrigue of packs of hungry journos. So when we happened to cruise over to Good‘ magazine’s “jobs” section the other day and noticed there are currently 19 open positions posted, we kind of freaked out. 19 open jobs!!! Big ones too: staff writer; art director; social media manager. And some strange ones like “partner content editor” as well.

Where exactly does a mid-sized media company get the cash to launch that kind of hiring spree? Was there a purge we didn’t hear about? An infusion of venture cash? And what’s a partner content editor?

We had to know, so we met with Good co-founder and creative director Casey Caplowe at the company’s Hollywood office and asked him what’s happening. As it turns out, a lot. Too much to talk about in one post.

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