CCNY Looks to Place Interns at Publishers

Five years after it was launched with support from bestselling author Walter Mosley and more than $200,000 in funding from major New York publishers, the Publishing Certificate Program at the City College of New York has graduated about 45 students and placed nearly half of them in book- and publishing-related jobs. The program was launched in an effort to create an academic training program that would attract minority students to the publishing industry.

David Unger, director of the PCP program, told PW that 19 PCP graduates have publishing-related jobs. Among the publishers and book-related firms that have hired PCP graduates are AOL Time Warner, John Wiley, Simon & Schuster and Random House. The program offers undergraduates courses in the skills needed in the publishing industry taught by publishing professionals.

But while publishers have provided significant financial support to the program and have hired its graduates, Unger told PW that major publishing houses were often slow to accept PCP students as interns. "We have working-class students who don't often have the same cachet as Ivy Leaguers, and it can be tough to get houses to look at our students for internships. If publishers are going to give us money to train students, they need to educate their own managers about accepting them."

Nevertheless, PCP works diligently to get its students placed, and about 25 students worked as volunteers at the recent BookExpo. This year the program also received a special grant from the Association of American Publishers to add to its Bernard Mazel publishing opportunity scholarships, and Unger was able to award five $1,000 grants to PCP students.

"We've carved out a niche," said Unger, "the caliber of our students has increased and we're introducing publishing as an option to students who haven't considered it before. We want publishers' money, but we also want to give them back a qualified and diverse workforce."