Ah, it's that time of year again. Hordes of college students will start eagerly sending out resumes and cover letters hoping to secure summer internships. In the field of journalism, landing an internship(s) is a crucial step in deciding on a career path. It's the way that students take what they're learning in theory and apply it to the "real world." For some, it's their first experience in a professional environment. And for most, these experiences will be unpaid.
Think of it as the business approach to Descartes' famous saying "I think, therefore, I am": "I work for free, therefore, I must love my job." Not necessarily so. But that's the price (or lack thereof) at which experience comes these days. Unfortunately, it's too much a part of the industry's business model to turn back now. For most publications, it's not a matter of not wanting to pay students; with the changing market and the economic fluctuations it's causing, they simply can't afford to do so.
In "Take This Internship and Shove It," New York Times op-ed writer Anya Kamenetz posits: "What if the growth of unpaid internships is bad for the labor market and for individual careers?" In some cases, that's probably true, but it also means that students must do more research to find internship opportunities that will benefit them most in the long run. It doesn't make sense to work for a magazine--where you'll only get a couple of very short clips for three of four months of work--when you really want to be a newspaper reporter. It's a waste of time to spend an entire summer at a TV station and the only thing you get to do is pick up dry cleaning and make coffee. During searches and interviews, be sure to ask very detailed questions about interns duties: What's a typical day like for an intern? To whom do interns report? Are there any non-monetary perks that come with the job (at the very least, some employers will pay for parking)? Remember: Employers aren't promising to provide the "ultimate intern experience." They're just giving students a shot at seeing how the sausage gets made, so to speak. It's up to the student to make the most of his/her experience.
adl
Aiesha D. Little
NABJ Adviser
University of Cincinnati Association of Black Journalists
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3 comments:
great point.
although i would counsel interns to ask for compensation.
1. demonstrate passion
2. demonstrate profecientcy
3. may not be the whole enchilada
4. but u still are getting paid.
matt
www.theaayp.org
um sorry.
it's late.
profeciency!
lol.
matt
www.theaayp.org
"great point. although i would counsel interns to ask for compensation."
you can't ask for something that you've already been told isn't available. when i send out info about the internships i offer at my magazine, i always include that the jobs are unpaid. if students read the info and decide they don't want to work for free, they're free to find other employment opportunities.
but the thing of it is someone else who wants the job for the experience, not the monetary benefits, will come along and won't care that it's unpaid. that's what you need to make it in journalism: experience. the more you have before you graduate from college, the easier it will be to get your first job. when the supply of employment opportunities is low and the demand for them is high, you have to break in any way you can. if that means an unpaid internship, so be it.
adl
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