POLITICS JUNE 25, 2008
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Beware the intern you just sent on a coffee run. And not just because she may use the yellow sweetener instead of the pink. No, beware the intern because as easy as it is to punk her around now, this pleasure, like smoking or drinking, is likely to come back to bite you later, when she rises to a position of power. Which is quite likely, as one of the fundamental truths about post-millennial working life is this: Ex-interns run the show. And like many banal workforce realities, this one’s pernicious.
The field of journalism offers a prime example of the power of the internship. At policy magazines like TNR, at glossies like Vanity Fair and Vogue, and at daily newspapers and television news programs, a couple months of grunt work for no or low pay is virtually a prerequisite for future employment. An inexperienced recent graduate, English major though she may be, is not going to waltz into a job in The New Yorker’s mail room—let alone as an editorial assistant—just because she’s a longtime fan of the magazine whose term paper on the avant-garde was one of the most insightful that her English professor had read in years.
In contrast, the successful applicant to an entry-level magazine job (a position that often consists of filing expenses and answering phones for a more senior editor) is likely to have had more than one internship under her belt. All magazine internships involve clerical work, but they probably allow for a bit of fact-checking—maybe some writing and reporting, too. And even the grunt work is (at least marginally) illuminating. Transcribing interviews, for instance, is sheer drudgery, but it’s also an intimate view into the reportorial process. And most internships also provide ample opportunity for the intern to pick up many unspoken rules of the field: She learns, for example, what went into the slush pile (the lowly name for stacks of unsolicited manuscripts), and she sees how successful writers craft their story pitches and get awarded assignments. Magazine internships often function as a sort of finishing school for rough-edged college students; they don’t always create better editors and reporters, but they certainly teach them the journalistic equivalent of knowing which is the salad fork. (For more elaboration, check out this Salon article by a former Harper’s intern.)
Newspapers—once seen as less snooty than magazines—are no less exacting. There are basically two ways to get a job as a big-city newspaper reporter. One is to start at a small-town paper—step one—and from there work your way up to a slightly bigger paper—step two—and go on to progressively bigger and better papers, so that in five to ten years, you’re covering school board meetings in a major metro area, like Denver or Philadelphia. The other common trajectory is to do a summer internship at a newspaper in a big city and wind up with a job offer when you graduate, bypassing the preliminary steps altogether. This is, for example, what disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair did, and it’s what I did, too: I was offered a job at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland after I interned there.
On its face, journalism’s reliance upon internship experience seems to be perfectly reasonable, an essentially merit-based system that rewards young people who’ve put in time above and beyond what their schooling required. But it’s not that simple.
For one, most journalism internships discriminate on the basis of financial wherewithal. Rare is the internship that doles out more than minimum wage, and who can afford to spend a summer working 40 hours a week for peanuts? Probably not a college student with a typical financial aid package. (At Swarthmore College, for example, the average student with financial aid was expected to contribute $1,890 over the summer, according to a recent article in the student newspaper.) On top of that, college students not lucky enough to be from internship meccas like New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, or Chicago are at an even greater disadvantage—unless their parents can help them out with the money to live for the summer in one of these places. Of course it’s possible for a really determined young intern without means to work a job on the side—waiting tables or the like—to pay her way, but that’s not the norm because … well, you try living in a city like New York or D.C. on a few hundred dollars a week. The rule of thumb, when it comes to internships, is that only the well-heeled bother to apply. (Newspapers may be a bit exceptional in this regard, as historically they have paid more.)
The other big problem with the internship culture is that it rewards young people who know exactly what they want to do and immediately begin strategizing about how to get there. Why? “The best internships get hundreds of applicants for just a few positions,” says Joe Grimm, the recruitment and development editor for the Detroit Free Press and a recruiter for Gannett. Successful applicants are likely to have worked on the school newspaper or magazine, first in high school and then in college. In other words, they started laying the groundwork for their careers in journalism before the braces came off their teeth. Selecting for such single-mindedness might make sense when seeking out, say, tomorrow’s astronauts or professional athletes. But is it sensible to, by default, select for those qualities in journalism, a field that requires its practitioners to observe and comment upon the world at large? Wouldn’t it make sense to do the exact opposite? That is, create incentives for people who have wider experience in the world?
There’s a social good problem at play when news is delivered by people who harbor such similar ambitions and come from such similar backgrounds, people who have spent their summers in the same cities and have worked at the same types of organizations. Naturally, they are likely to keep spotting and writing about the same types of issues—and keep missing different ones. What would it be like to have more education reporters who’d spent time teaching in struggling public schools or metro reporters who’d been cops or social workers? But while it’s not impossible to break into journalism at an advanced age (such as 24 or 25) with little but intelligence and drive and non-journalistic life experience to recommend you, the chips are certainly stacked against you.
Take the case of Bethany McLean. McLean is the Fortune magazine (soon-to-be Vanity Fair) reporter who questioned Enron’s viability more than six months before the company’s implosion. “[T]he company remains largely impenetrable to outsiders,” McLean wrote in March of 2001. “How exactly does Enron make its money? Details are hard to come by … the numbers that Enron does present are often extremely complicated.” It’s probably not a coincidence that she did such a thorough job of breaking the company’s financial information down since McLean, unlike many business reporters, had spent three years reading similar reports as an analyst for Goldman Sachs before deciding to segue into journalism. But if it weren’t for a personal connection—the guy she was dating had a friend at Fortune, where she was hired as a fact-checker and gradually moved up the ranks—McLean probably would never have had the opportunity to write the story. She’d spent months applying to newspapers for business reporting jobs and hadn’t landed a job. Most likely because her résumé, filled with business experience, did not look like that of the typical applicant. And that was 13 years ago. “It’s probably even harder to break in now,” McLean says.
Of course, there are institutions that are ready to profit off your predicament—er, I mean, help you get your foot in the door—if you’re a late-comer. Shell out more than $40,000 to attend, say, Columbia University School of Journalism (again, like I did), and you can apply for the same internships as college students. In fact, you are strongly advised to do so. It’s rather a lot of trouble—and a pretty penny—just to get an internship and by extension an entry-level job, especially in a profession where the average starting salary is about $32,000, but that’s the nature of journalism today.
Of course, none of this is the interns’ fault. It’s easy to disparage them for being strivers; the implication is that other young people, who are truly intellectually curious, are out there grooming dogs and smuggling immigrants, Augie March-style. But that’s not fair. When we set up a system that rewards young people so disproportionately for behaving like strivers from the age of 14 on (or whenever they grasp the highly fraught imperative to get into college), it’s mean-spirited to then find fault with them for doing so. It’s probably safe to assume that many of this summer’s interns would rather not be photocopying expense reports. But the ones who opt out—the ones who work minimum wage jobs and learn firsthand something about how the other half lives, something more than what they learn just from reading How the Other Half Lives in American History class—well, check back in a few years. They probably won’t be working at a liberal magazine that covers poverty policy. That job went to someone who’d done an internship.
Adelle Waldman has written for The New York Times Book Review, The New York Observer, and The New York Sun.
50 comments
Amen, amen, amen. 100 percent on the mark.
- Brian
June 25, 2008 at 8:19am
Of course, you don't have to do an internship to post on a blog ...
- Citizen Journalist
June 25, 2008 at 9:19am
I write about this in my new book SuperMedia (blackwell). I call it a lack of 'editorial diversity'. People are so focussed in becoming journalists that the really interesting people are excluded (as well as minorities, less well off etc) Charlie Beckett
- Charlie Beckett
June 25, 2008 at 9:49am
Good read. I agree, having done three newspaper internships, that many of these kids are strivers/overachievers. I was the exception, though. I was a lowly English major my first two years in school. I was lucky because my uni has a wellknown J-school and professors with connections. I rose to the top as an underachiever who never wrote for the school paper. God bless America.
- WSJ intern
June 25, 2008 at 10:40am
Fascinating topic. Believe it or not, I have been discussing this topic, or at least the "penumbras" of this topic since I graduated from college, way back in 82. Why? Because as a young talented Lation grad, with an interest in the written word, I thought about applying for this kind of work. The problem was that I simply could not afford to eat, keep shelter over my then fully coiffed head, and work for some magazine or publishing house for peanuts. And, when I looked around at my friends and acquaintances who could and did do this, they were usually whiter and had parents to could help them financially with the move to someplace like NYC or LA or SF. I remember going to a discussion in SF with Walter Moseley and he touched upon the publishing's structure discentive to bring in a more diverse, blacker and browner workforce. I buttonholed him after the talk and we briefly bitched about it together. So, rather than a career in journalism, I took a job that could pay me enough money to live. And for my friends, many who were in similar situations and less inclined to work in the public sector, they had to take more lucrative entry level jobs to start to pay off their student loans. You speak of a broken systemt that perpetuates a certain kind of person who can and has the familial support to get them through this sort of indentured servitude.
- thejauntyboulevardier
June 25, 2008 at 10:42am
This system has never made much sense. I spent two summers taking classes, working at the college paper, and, yes, earning money. I could not have afforded to work for free unless there was a rock-solid guarantee of a job at the end of the summer. Of course, people like Joe Grimm think it's a great system because they don't have to think.
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 10:43am
Might have been worth noting TNR's internship program that generously allows kids to work at min wage for a year in DC for the privilege being a reporter researcher.
- ahr
June 25, 2008 at 11:02am
I just want to gives props for using Office's album cover. Good Chicago pop.
- mjhniner
June 25, 2008 at 11:21am
On the other side of this are minority fellowships and internships. Poor white kid? You're out of luck.
- Amy Alkon
June 25, 2008 at 11:26am
Good work, Adelle. I would conjecture that the newspaper/magazine publishing industry will never change their grooming and hiring mores, and will now stop banging my head into a brick wall trying to come by an publishing job without first becoming an intern. Thank you for clarifying that.
- dylanposer
June 25, 2008 at 11:26am
I dunno. I went to a large, mediocre state university in the West and got an elite internship at a NYC magazine, I suspect because I'd been reading the magazine carefully for years. My folks didn't have any money, so I took out a bank loan to float me through the summer. I told the bank this: "Living in New York for a summer is cheaper than grad school, and unlike grad school, I'll actually get a job afterwards." Two years later, I'd paid it off, and now work as a journalist. Yeah, lots of rich kids muck around in Big City Magazine Journalism, but some of them are smart and interesting. For those of us neither rich nor connected, getting a foot in the door is largely a process of self-selection. If you're crazy and devoted enough to do it, you'll do it.
- I, Robot
June 25, 2008 at 11:36am
In my news organization we routinely hire people without journalism backgrounds, but with industry expertise. That's because, here in Shanghai, there's a shortage of experienced English-language business writers and editors. The jobs don't pay much by US standards, but it's a great way to get some great bylines and jump-start your career. Life out here is pretty cheap, too, and you might be able to get an extension on your student loans -- I did, when I went to Russia in the mid-90s. The talent crunch is bad enough that I've even hired copy editors (and, sometimes, writers) based elsewhere, including the U.S., to work (virtually) side by side with my China-based staff. But, fundamentally, it all comes down to persistence. It's the only job requirement that's indispensable to a news reporting career -- and one that's easy to demonstrate during a job hunt. If getting a job requires getting to know the right people, then get to know the right people. If it requires being in the right location, then get to the right location. Good journalists do this all the time on their jobs -- they track down sources, and chase down stories. And if someone wants to chat with me about China, feel free to track me down. And if you're persistent and relentless in getting me to talk to you -- well, that's worth more to me than several internships on your resume.
- Maria Trombly
June 25, 2008 at 11:46am
Do some research and you'll find a number of newspapers (admittedly the larger ones) that pay a pretty good salary for interns -- certainly well above the minimum wage that you cite.
- BobH
June 25, 2008 at 11:47am
I think this article is a bit off the mark as it comes to newspapers, at least in terms of who can intern where. My family couldn't have afforded to support me on an unpaid or minimum-wage internship in another city all summer when I was in college (Temple University 2001-05). And they didn't have to. Both of my internships (at the St. Pete Times and, yes, Joe Grimm's Free Press) paid me well above minimum wage, and I was able to afford rent (in decent apartments), groceries and gas while even saving some money. They also paid my travel expenses getting to and from the cities at the beginning and end of the summer. Many of my friends at the Temple News had the same experience at papers around the country. This isn't to say there are papers that pay badly and won't pay your expenses, but most seem to do OK. Also, most everyone I know who is now working professionally got started at their college paper, not their high school paper. As to the rest, a lot of it is true, in my experience at least. Working your way up through the small papers or getting hired from your internship is often the norm. (Though I'm not at either of my internship papers.) And it is absolutely true that papers want people with the internships, and the writing clips, that prove they're the right sort of candidate. You're not going to get hired at a major metro paper without major experience at a newspaper.
- Brian White
June 25, 2008 at 11:48am
"I remember going to a discussion in SF with Walter Moseley and he touched upon the publishing's structure discentive to bring in a more diverse, blacker and browner workforce. I buttonholed him after the talk and we briefly bitched about it together. So, rather than a career in journalism, I took a job that could pay me enough money to live." The people who don't understand that last part simply cry "lack of diversity" and blame "racism."
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 11:50am
When I was finishing college, the fact that the best internships only made sense for people who already had financial support from their family was painfully obvious. I was particularly frustrated by the number of “progressive” alternative weeklies full of editorial content deriding WalMart etc. for no paying “living wages,” while simultaneously offering unpaid or minimum-wage internships.
- Kendra
June 25, 2008 at 11:59am
By the way, I am also a former nonprofit professional, and there is a similar problem in that world. Young people who have the skills and education neccessary to do a lot of important work in the sector are also saddled with awesome debt, and the wages they would earn are simply not sufficient to manage that debt. Even the most bright-eyed and idealistic among us can get pretty burned out when we spend our days advocating for "disadvateged" populations who in many cases are getting paid more than we are.
- Kendra
June 25, 2008 at 12:04pm
"I would conjecture that the newspaper/magazine publishing industry will never change their grooming and hiring mores, and will now stop banging my head into a brick wall trying to come by an publishing job without first becoming an intern." Way to miss the point entirely. Some people cannot afford to work internships. Perhaps you missed that portion of the article.
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 12:11pm
During our bus ride home from the Nationals game last night, the driver pointed to a car that was taped off and the cops swarming over it with cameras and gloved hands, and said to my girlfriend and me, "You all best go straight inside when you get off this bus, the woman in that car was raped and murdered and left in that car all day." That was seven blocks from our apartment, an apartment we're living in while I intern at a political magazine and figure out a way to write for a living. There are worse things than receiving peanuts in exchange for hard work.
- Mike Riggs
June 25, 2008 at 12:48pm
Well, there are other alternatives. We have six interns this summer. Four are local young people; they already live here and are interested in journalism, and do not need to fuss about housing. Two others are part of the Dow Jones internship program, and one has a parent living not all that far away. None are particularly wealthy. (Nor will they ever be if they become journalists, but that is of course another topic entirely.) This is admittedly not the New York Times. On the other hand it would not occur to any of us to send the interns for coffee. They're too busy with real work. We thought that's what internships were for: We get real work, interns get to find out what journalism feels like when it's done for real. Since we use "local" young people, we also get the advantage of the viral connection: Word spreads that Kayda and Ricardo are getting bylines in the Pocono Record and we start picking up a few more younger readers, both in print and online, and they find out we actually have information they can use. Is that win/win/win? Let me make it win/win/win/win: The energy and ideas they bring to the newsroom are invaluable to those of us who toil on year after year. Some of them radiate energy you can almost see. Hard to put a pricetag on that, but if your newsroom is like most these days, energy and enthusiasm are in short supply. Interns are like freshly charged batteries, reminding all of us what we were like when we started out and keeping the hopes and dreams alive despite phenomenon like Sam Zell, Faux news and weird ownership that wants layoffs when profit margins are in the double digits. All our interns are paid. Damn little, but they are paid. If we can pay them, anyone can pay them. Just offering up another model in case anyone finds it useful. Bill Watson Pocono Record Stroudsburg, Pa.
- Bill Watson
June 25, 2008 at 1:01pm
Absolutely spot on. The foulest irony about internships is that now for legal/insurance reasons many require that you receive credit. This means you pay to not be paid. It's a disastrous mess, and I'm glad someone has written about it. I don't know anyone who got a journalism job without a master's degree who did not intern for at least 6 months.
- Guelda
June 25, 2008 at 1:44pm
The whole premise of this post is thrown into question by the first sentence. Anyone who thinks the pink sweetener is preferable to the yellow can't possibly know what they are talking about.
- whalt
June 25, 2008 at 1:48pm
Oh wait, if by yellow sweetener you were talking about Sugar Twin and not Splenda then I retract my previous statement.
- whalt
June 25, 2008 at 1:49pm
Hello, it's called "the real world". I work full-time AND go to school, AND managed to hold down an internship over the summer. I go to a state school, currently majoring in journalism and I'm just disgusted by the tiny salaries offered to college grads. How are you supposed to live on that? It seems like the system is ENCOURAGING college students to accumulate massive amounts of debt and lean on their parents fo financial support for long periods of time. No wonder the economy is in trouble. I guess you don't enter the journalism profession for the money, but I make more $$ now than many of my friends who just graduated. For a long time, I thought that an internship was out of the question. How are you supposed to get a reporting job without experience...and how can you get that experience without having to borrow money for living expenses during your internship? I don't know what state you guys are in, but most of the internships I've looked at are unpaid or minimum wage. I know so many publishers that have cut back on the internship programs as a cost-cutting measure. It's terrible, but this is the "real world" people. No one said it was easy or fair. To all you college students out there, don't give up. Hang in there. It may be that the chips are stacked against you, but if I can do it, I know you can too.
- Happy
June 25, 2008 at 1:50pm
No I've re-reconsidered. There is really no difference between Sugar Twin and Sweet-N-Low. They are both sacharine and distinguishing between the two is just fussy fetishism. Besides if when you say yellow sweetener you are still thinking of Sugar Twin then you are hopelessly behind the times. Either way your opinions on a whole host of matters would have to be called into question. And again if you were referring to Splenda and making the case that you found Sweet-N-Low to be superior then you are just so clearly wrong that nothing you say should really be listened to.
- whalt
June 25, 2008 at 2:00pm
As an intern at a newspaper, I think many of the premises in this article are bullshit. Internships are not just for the "well-heeled." I'm supporting myself off of my own pay, and have done that two summers in a row. And do you really think newspapers are going to draw in people from other fields when they can't even hold on to newspaper lifers? Someone young and dedicated to journalism is exactly what the industry needs now.
- Intern
June 25, 2008 at 2:03pm
As the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, I share the concern that some students might not be able to afford a summer internship, which are often unpaid. That's why we make sure all of our students are paid for their summer interships, which are a required part of our Master of Arts degree program in journalism. If the employer pays the students, fine. If not, we pay each student $3,000 for the summer. Everyone is on an equal footing. We're grateful to the Knight Foundation for supporting this program, which we believe is unique.
- Stephen B. Shepard
June 25, 2008 at 2:21pm
I'm on a fellowship at a major metro this summer and have interned in DC for a couple wire services. All three have paid fairly well, either through a $2,000 stipend or $16-an-hour wages. I'm a middle-class, white guy who just graduated from a state school in the West (not in California). I could not have done these internships without the help of my parents (to whom I am eternally grateful). I would agree the internship process we college grads go through to even get a foot in the door in journalism is ridiculous. We put so much effort into this pursuit of a career in journalism that we sometimes forget to go outside and learn something more practical. I will admit I do fit your personality profile of that overachieving college kid hellbent on getting an internship and then a job at a major metro. But can you really blame me? This trend starts when student journalists start work at their college newspaper - and sometimes earlier - and quickly learn that if they want to go anywhere in this industry they need to sacrifice, take internships and focus only on journalism. All the while, we're surrounded by the doom and gloom of the newspaper industry. To me it's pure economics why more so-called experts don't leave their day jobs to become journalists: The pay doesn't match what they could make in their current industry - save for educators. And to top it off, it's an unspoken rule that once you're fed up with the crap pay at a newspaper, you quit and take a job as a flak. So is there a problem with internships at major metros? Only if you consider this self-fulling prophesy a problem. (BTW, I have no experience with magazines and I tend to think those gigs are reserved for vets from the news business or trust fund kids).
- Alphie
June 25, 2008 at 3:11pm
There's another dirty little secret about internships: They can - and do - replace hiring full-time, experienced professionals. I know of newsrooms that use interns and "stringers" to make up for staff cuts or hiring freezes, rather than just summer vacations, saving their owners the costs of realistic salaries and benefits. That clearly is part of the growing trend in "year-round" internships. And it ensures salaries will remain low. It's a shame so many young journalists, trying to get their feet in the rumored door, ensure there will be less compensation on the other side. It's also a shame so many of our best and brightest hit a financial wall by age 30 or so, and must move on to "real" jobs and careers - often obfuscating rather than clarifying the truth. We do need another training paradigm, along with a more realistic valuing of the skills and creativity that journalism will need to rise from ashes of its current financial conflagration.
- Greg Smith
June 25, 2008 at 3:37pm
I wholly agree with this article. When I began preparing to graduate from journalism school (not a really well known one, but a good one) the whole internship game thing really frustrated me too. I had to borrow $400 to be able to move one state over to do a fellowship at the Arizona Republic right after graduating -- and it was paid! But besides the internship filtering process, the system seems to work against working class young people without a lot of financial cushion with the long hours, low pay and little satisfaction. How do you live like that? (I got lucky, however, since I've always had an eye on online news and it pays much better than being a reporter.)
- darleene
June 25, 2008 at 3:40pm
There must be a world of difference between newspaper and magazine internships. As a newspaper editor above mentioned, we never used our interns to get coffee or make copies. We sent them out on stories and helped them hone their news writing skills. And we paid them -- not a lot, but plenty to share an apartment with another intern, buy groceries and entertain themselves. Same thing when I interned at a mid-sized paper. Enough money to share rent and buy beer at the bar after work. So why the differences? Well, my experience is at mid-size to large metro dailies, not at the biggest papers in the biggest cities, or high-profile magazines or nonprofits. I get the whole foot-in-the-door concept, but I hope students realize there are a lot of options where they can get paid, do real work, get real clips, and get references that will still help them get a foot in the door at those national publications. They just might have to go somewhere other than New York, DC, Chicago or LA to get that experience. Surely they can survive one summer outside of the big city in pursuing their passion.
- newshound
June 25, 2008 at 3:43pm
"The energy and ideas they bring to the newsroom are invaluable to those of us who toil on year after year. Some of them radiate energy you can almost see." Interesting. I'm not sure where that attitude was 15 years ago when the mantra was: "You need experience," but I'll add it to the mounting pile of evidence for: "Why the newspaper hiring system is horribly flawed."
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 5:14pm
I'm going to share your article with the 11 newsroom interns who are working at The Virginian-Pilot this summer. They get paid $575 a week. They come from a mix of schools as diverse as the University of Montana and Carnegie Mellon University. And they are a diverse group with varied backgrounds. They work across the newsroom, from the Military Team to the Online Team to Photo to Design -- and everything in between. Nearly every one has been on the front page at least once so far this summer -- and all of them have been on section fronts -- with meaty and significant storytelling. I typically get 300 applications, and winnowing them down to about a dozen is the hardest task I handle all year. I've never sent an intern for coffee, but we have, on rare occasion, hired interns straight into staff writer positions (which usually require a minimum two years experience). We're not Chicago or New York, but we offer a damn good internship experience, if I do say so myself -- and we're proud of it. Denise Bridges Director of Newsroom Recruitment The Virginian-Pilot
- Denise Bridges
June 25, 2008 at 5:18pm
Wenalway, My read on this piece was that the newspaper and magazine publishing industires are difficult to break into by virtue of their structure--the way they recruit and report is all part of fixed, operational blueprint. So, that said, I was speaking to the impossibility of one's chances to make it into the industry without having an internship (or five) under one's belt. How is that a misreading?
- dylanposer
June 25, 2008 at 5:58pm
"I'm going to share your article with the 11 newsroom interns who are working at The Virginian-Pilot this summer. They get paid $575 a week." Yes, that ad hominem argument resolves everything. More evidence for the pile.
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 6:14pm
"So, that said, I was speaking to the impossibility of one's chances to make it into the industry without having an internship (or five) under one's belt. How is that a misreading?" Because you missed the point, which is it's not a great way to get the most talented people. This way, the elitists and trust fund brats usually have the inside track because they can afford to take whole summers off to work for peanuts. There have been a bunch of ad hominem arguments posted, but the point remains: Journalism hiring is horribly flawed and has been for some time.
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 6:29pm
Don't bother arguing with wenalway. He's a well-known lunatic who posts endlessly online because he's been banished from newspapers everywhere.
- bigyaz
June 25, 2008 at 6:51pm
I'm obsolete. I started writing non-fiction freelance at the age of 35 after having been a soldier, gas station attendant, sailboat bum, cook, auto mechanic, cab and limo driver, electronics tech, and design engineer. Now I'm 55, and I'm often appalled at the amazing lack of knowledge shown by the young reporters who dominate our local newspapers. And talk about "white bread!" Some of them may have dark skins, but they are culturally identical to one another, regardless of color. When I suggested -- to a group of young, local reporters -- that they hang out with a bunch of old black men who spend their days leaning against the wall across the street from where a "nobody saw nothing" murder took place, the kiddies (of all races) were horrified. I'm white, but I have no trouble grabbing a Colt 40 (malt liquor in a big can, not a gun), chatting up the locals, and writing down (learn shorthand, kids!) what they say. Or -- in a different social setting -- wearing khakis and questioning yacht-clubbers about their latest financial dealings. Plus, since I have (as they used to say) been around a bit, I have a good head start on research in almost any field. I know the difference between a sergeant and a staff sergeant; between a serial hybrid and a parallel hybrid (auto powertrains); C++ and Visual Basic (programming languages); why Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims don't get along (and why they both despise Ahmadis); how a GPS works; how to shoot many different kinds of firearms; the internal workings of a jet engine; the staff structure of a typical Congresscritter's office; and lots of other stuff that no living human being will ever pick up in college and two summers as an intern. Naturally, I don't work on a newspaper. There isn't a paper in this country that would even think about hiring me. Instead, I'm boss editor for an online tech news operation, and on the side I own a small (but growing) video production business. And, unlike the newspapers that are laying off like mad, I'm hiring -- but since I need people who can not only write, but have at least a basic knowledge of Linux and FOSS (If you don't know what "FOSS" is, please don't bother to apply), filling my $40K+/year opening is a tedious task. My diverse background was once common in newsrooms. Today it's rare to the point of nonexistence. Both newspaper and TV reporting are so bland that you'd think the people doing it have no life experience or knowledge of anything but how to be a journalist -- which ain't all that hard to pick up on your own if you like to read and are willing to gut it out in the freelance netherworld while you learn the trade. And yes, it's a trade, just like carpentry or auto repair, not a profession. Really. It don't take no degree to be a good writer. Mark Twain only had four years of formal schooling, and there aren't but 10 or 20 living writers in this country who are worth a pimple on his posterior.
- Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
June 25, 2008 at 7:25pm
Nice argument, bigyaz. And your point is -- oh, that's right. You don't have one. Thanks for playing.
- Wenalway
June 25, 2008 at 8:41pm
Not a single profile or quote from an actual intern? Great stuff. How much are you getting paid? What about interns who have great jobs? Let's just gloss over that, too, so we can force a theme. Don't mention layoffs, either, you probably don't even have to pay attention to what's going on in the industry. Not citing a single source from college career center directors? Brilliant. Couldn't even find a source from your alma mater? What about agencies that students pay to find internships for them? Yeah, just skip the reporting. No need to investigate. Here's a piece of shit to add some more clout.
- The Intern
June 25, 2008 at 10:17pm
Ms. Waldman's perspective explains much about the frequent failure of "journalism" to ring true for people with real-world experience. Even more dire, however, is the stranglehold such inbreeding has on our political-governmental ranks, where Ms. Waldman's call for "wider experience in the world" would be more generally beneficial but is even less valued.
- Thomas J. Byrne
June 26, 2008 at 11:06am
Like the Virginia-Pilot's approach, NPR's summer interns are expected to contribute to the work and are paid. And, our interns do their own radio show and create and run their own website http://www.npr.org/internedition I hire an Executive Producer and Managing Editor for the summer and they manage the Intern Edition staff. Right now, NPR has nearly 80 former interns now working as full-time, regular staff and a dozen or so more as temporary hires. Still, even more former interns and external boot-camp trainees (http://www.npr.org/nextgen) are working as reporters and producers in the public radio system. That's the good news. Mr. Smith raises a very important point which I ahve seen over the 10 years I have managed NPR's "next generation radio" program. It's VERY difficult to get even successful minority applicants to our programs to "stick." Generally, they cannot afford to work for $7.50/hour and then not have some kind of regular position once the internship is done. Our Spring and Winter internships are unpaid. This results in a very skewed workforce which tends to be made up of white kids from families that can afford it. I'm still an exception, African-American male from an very over-educated family that could afford to cover me while I found my path. An answer? Companies that really want to diversify need to define diversity beyond skin color to economic, religious and educational and language diversity too. But it won't happen as long as the only people who come into as interns to your company are from the same place/schools/economy/culture. Maybe changing the people doing the choosing might help too.
- Doug Mitchell
June 26, 2008 at 12:22pm
As a hiring editor for many years who's seen a lot of interns come and go, I've taken great pains to bring in a diverse -- in every way -- group of young (and old) people who wanted to find out if there was a place in this media world for them. I've had broadcast students who learned they should be in print. I've had copy editors who learned they should be cooks and sheriff's deputies. AND, I've also had students who desperately wanted to do public service and found journalism is their calling. And yes, I've had highly focused journalism students who stayed in the business and some who left. But they all learned how it all works, and they've all been smarter consumers and citizens for it. I cringe every time I hear a "go fetch" story about coffee or typing or other abuses. Those managers who allow that behavior reflect poorly on the rest of us who struggle to pay with money or college credit and make sure the students have something to show at the end of term. We have to remember what we do is a craft, and internships provide experience nothing else can. As we face industry cutbacks, we're doing a disservice to our future and our readers if we cut those opportunities for students who are still searching for a place. Providing good, constructive internships is one of the most valuable things a news organization can do. Period.
- SCatron
June 26, 2008 at 2:28pm
I'm supporting myself through an internship this summer for the second year in a row and plan to do the same next year. In fact, just about all of my friends at internships are in the same boat. Yes, internships do go to the people who work the hardest, but since when did that become a bad thing? The journalism industry needs innovative thinkers and hard workers to pull it out of its current slump. Plus, this article disregards the fact that many students take internships during the school year when their housing and food is paid for by scholarships, loans or family. Others take a semester off to intern during the academic year, using money that would otherwise have paid tuition and fees. (They can still graduate on time, too.) There is more than one way to get the internships needed to break into this business, it just takes some savvy. Plus, if you don't know how to get what you want - and do so with little to no money - you really can't hack it in this business to begin with. "Do more with less" is journalism's recent motto. It's unfortunate, but it's not going anywhere - especially if you shut out the "overachievers."
- Another Intern
June 26, 2008 at 2:35pm
The big difference between newspaper and magazine internships is that newspaper internships actually tend to pay (noted from someone who has applied to many of both over the past three years). I am a almost-college grad who is now interning at a national left-leaning political mag in DC, and--following in line with many magazines--getting no pay. One thing that distinguishes me from many of my fellow interns, and other interns around here I meet at other similar magazines, is that I come from a public university. Unlike many of my friends and students I know there, I was lucky enough to come from a family that (barely) could afford to help me out this summer, treating the internship as I did: an experience that will pay off in the long run. Yet the internship would be very hard, if not impossible if I didn't have that support. One of my housemates works 30 hours a week at a coffee shop on top of her 40-hour a week unpaid non-profit internship--doable, but certainly not what I see as the ideal internship: doing your best at the internship while also having time to enjoy a new area and meet new people.
- dcintern
June 27, 2008 at 10:52am
"It's easy to disparage them for being strivers; the implication is that other young people, who are truly intellectually curious, are out there grooming dogs and smuggling immigrants, Augie March-style.' Well, there are young people who go into this profession because they too, are truly intellectually curious... Secondly, I don't know why you criticise "overachievers." In any profession, if you want to move forward, hard work and determination are prerequisites. Ask any successful businessperson, politician, social leader, artist... Thirdly, you imply "ambitious" interns are bad for journalism -- I tend to think they're at least better than J-school educated kids who prance around calling themselves "journalists" even before they've had any training or internships. Interns are willing to accept any kind of shit so that they can move forward and break out into the world. They will accept long working hours for peanuts or repeated coffee runs for the editor because they can't wait to get out into the world and satisfy their intellectual curiosity, their passion for listening to people, their determination to communicate to readers. It's as simple as that... J-school kids think that because they've gone to Columbia or Northwestern, they're entitled to a fancy job at the NYTimes. Also, as "Another Intern" has said, there are other ways to finance your internship, which can include negotiating with your editor to cover at least half of your room and board (like I did). I covered the rest with money saved from my college job.
- A third intern
June 28, 2008 at 1:23am
Robin 'Roblimo' Miller, so with all your experience and obvious knack for talking to various people, which newspaper or organisation do you work for?
- nyintern
June 28, 2008 at 3:57am
It's true that if you need to get something done you will find a way. I spent a year total interning at newspapers and a summer at studio (I do photojournalism) in NYC. The NYC one was unpaid and I found a place to crash due to a good attitude and some kind people in good places. (I'm in grad school now at no financial detriment of my own thanks to good fortune and supportive scholarship programs). BUT ""Do more with less" is journalism's recent motto" If you see this as your opportunity to show you can do more with less, you only feeding into the bosses idea of how to make money and are hurting your own reporting ability at the same time. Some people will kiss just about any amount of ass to get ahead, even if it kills their own skills and integrity. Unfortunately, you have to draw a line where quality suffers. I hope that the interns reading this now, that see staff members at their publications getting canned aren't only thinking about how for every 3 reporters canned there might be a spot for them in the future, but are thinking about how their very place of work is turning into a rag without good content. This isn't true everywhere, but it's that blind ambition from some young people that is leading them to take any job, whether or not they write (or photograph or design) inane drivel. Even as an intern you need your standards. If this industry doesn't turn around it's why I want I think that finding another line of work is a good idea. You can bet I am damn committed to wanting to tell stories that actually matter in the best way possible, like any other journalist will tell you, but the problem is that the avenue for this is killing itself. The intern process is only a small part of it. Oh, and yeah, newspapers pay better. Still not that of an annual salary, but you're not a professional yet! Most people in most industries (ones with plenty of $$) have to do this. If you really want to intern and 575$ a week isn't cutting it than you're not being resourceful enough, cuz there's no way in hell you're gonna get much better than that for your first or second intern gig.
- Peter
June 28, 2008 at 10:16pm
The only thing I disagree with this story is the notion that interns are usually paid something. I've interned at both of Seattle's major newspapers as a reporter and with multimedia, and I haven't been paid a dime. What also sucks is few non-journalism majors can even get internships, making it difficult to study anything different in school.
- Seattle Intern
July 2, 2008 at 3:07am
Help me. I need an internship, yet that seems hard to come by right now. );
- Cristina S
January 29, 2009 at 3:06pm