From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

When we decided late last week to put Nelson Mandela's visit to the U.S. on our cover, three of the journalists who scrambled to get the story were newly arrived college interns. Michelle Ray, an editor for the University of California at Santa Barbara Daily Nexus, assembled background research for the Nation section. Otto Pohl, a student at Cornell, photographed the parade in lower Manhattan on Wednesday, then joined assistant picture editor Richard Boeth at the light table to edit the pictures. On Thursday night Robin Bennefield, who has been managing editor of the Swarthmore Phoenix, headed out to Yankee Stadium to cover the rally. Says Ray: "I was surprised that the people at TIME reacted to a big news story much as we do at my school paper: hurried, nervous, intense."

Ray, Pohl and Bennefield are among a dozen students working at TIME this summer. For many years we have invited some of the brightest U.S. college juniors to Manhattan to learn how we put out the magazine -- and sometimes to come back full time. Managing editor Henry Muller, Stanford '68, started his career as a summer intern at our sister magazine LIFE. More recently, Time Warner has added internships for graduate students as well, to expose them to all the facets of our publishing enterprises.

The interns are often surprised to be given important assignments as soon as they arrive. Naznina Bhatia, an M.B.A. candidate at Harvard, joined our London office this summer as one of the interns assisting Robert Jurgrau, business manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Says Jurgrau: "They're helping me revise our strategic plan, and they'll be coming along on a visit to our Amsterdam office next month." Brazilian Mauro Vaisman, a journalism major at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is researching international news stories. Says he: "I thought I would come here and maybe make coffee. But from my first day I have been treated like a member of the family and have been given a lot of responsibility. This place is a school! I am learning every second." Vaisman has just discovered one reason we all love journalism: the lifelong education it offers. No wonder he feels like a member of the family.