How Unpaid Internships are Hurting the Publishing Industry

Although by now this has become my daily routine.  After a shower and abrupt lunch, largely consisting of fast food and an instant coffee, I set foot before my laptop and prowl the net for recent employment updates.  The internet can be a valuable resource when it comes to job searching, if you know where to look.  Job boards like Masthead Online, Quill & Quire, and Magazines Canada are a good start.  The career sections of Canada’s three major players in magazine publishing – that being Rogers Publishing, St. Joseph’s Media, and Transcontinental – are updated frequently.  And sometimes, you might even get lucky looking up the career sections of companies like Corus Entertainment, CTVGlobeMedia, Harlequin Enterprises, and Chapters directly from their homepages.

However, the longer I search for permanent full-time work in either book or magazine publishing the more I become aware that this landscape is thoroughly divided into two separate camps.  The first is an array of jobs better suited for people with simply more work experience (at least three years at an actual publishing house) often in a senior level position, for example an advertising sales associate or assistant editor.  The second group belongs to a bevy of unpaid internships offered to students for little or no money who are gullible enough to accept them.  Now I’m not saying there aren’t any jobs out there for the professional, wide-eyed optimist looking to start a career in the wonderful world of publishing.  What I’m saying is the number of jobs offered to students in the publishing industry is extremely limited when I have to compete against sixty other recent graduates from Centennial (not including several dozen others grads from journalism and publishing programs at comparable post-secondary schools like Durham College, Ryerson, and Seneca).

So what’s my point really?  So what if every book and magazine company offers an internship or two here and there?  My point is this.  Offering non-paying internships could prove detrimental in the long run to the publishing industry for two very specific reasons.  The first is relatively obvious.  How are recent grads suppose to get a leg-up in this industry if all that’s being offered to these qualified candidates are unpaid internships?  But secondly, and more importantly in my opinion, is the individual self-worth of the employees who get offered these placements in the first place.

I believe many aspiring students are getting shortchanged into believing there’s some kind of publicity value in the work they’re doing, and ultimately being duped into thinking they might be offered a job once they accept these work placements.  At what cost is the replacement generation expected to pay if a solid number of jobs offered amounts to a little more than volunteer work?  In the past month alone I’ve sold a few articles to prominent trade magazines totaling over $300 (the first freelance articles I’ve ever sold for money).  So I guess I must be doing something right.  Although, in that same month I’ve applied for a dozen more jobs and haven’t received a single call back for an interview. 

At some point along the way publishers got so used to the idea of students working for free that it became the status quo.  However, I’ve come to realize in the past couple of weeks that it’s the amateurs in this industry willing to work for nothing that make it so hard for the professionals trying to start a career in this industry.  I’ve tried very hard to make sure this article does not come off as a rant.  And if I’ve failed, good.  I hope this unemployment is merely a minor setback in my greater career path.  It just frustrates me when a job that I’m more than qualified to do gets passed off to someone less qualified willing to do it for free.  A practice so rampant it would be considered, not only irresponsible, but downright unacceptable in any other industry in this country.