Intern season is here, reminding us of the perennial ethical hazards attached to this rite of journalistic passage. Unpaid internships have always been problematic, considering the advantage given to those with resources and connections, but they were also a reliable pathway to paid employment in the media business. Today, the promise of landing a job after a successful internship or two seems like a mirage as the journalism industry sheds jobs and loses publications.
So a few weeks before universities empty out for the summer, and bright-eyed interns show up in your office, let us reflect on this annual phenomenon. A traditional journalism career is becoming more uncertain and amorphous every day, while growing numbers of college students are eager to work unpaid internships as a down payment on that very elusive thing. Given everything that we know about unpaid internships—and full disclosure, CJR has unpaid interns, too—is this practice fair now? Was it ever? And who is excluded from the industry because of it?
Since I wrote my master's project on this for j-school last year, I'll take the first stab at this. Internships are a disaster for myriad reasons.
1. Most journalism internships are more or less illegal, which I'll try to explain. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that all workers receive minimum wage. But workers categorized as “non-employees” can be exempt from FLSA, if the terms of their employment meet six criteria.
These are:
1-the training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
2-the training is for the benefit of the trainees;
3-the trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
4-the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion his operations may actually be impeded;
5-the trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the training period; and
6-the employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.
Also, the New York State Department of Labor adds that the term employment doesn’t cover students enrolled in an academic program at a degree-granting institution. (Which is true of students during the year, but not in the summer.)
In practice, however, it is the fourth item that is more closely evaluated by courts, and while it's hard to define who benefits more from an internship--the student who is getting experience, and a resume item or the employer who loses time explaining tasks to interns who inevitably screw it up and need more feedback--most media internships look very much like the benefit goes to the publication.
2. Besides the companies who get free labor for the summer, colleges and universities also make a pretty penny off the practice. Most internships require that students earn credit for their internships through their universities. This is another way that employers make sure their summer interns don’t look like real employees and are therefore exempt from FLSA.
But, college credits have to be paid for in the summer at a lot of colleges. So, in addition to working for free, unpaid interns also have to shell out money to pay their universities. For example, at NYU, a credit cost $1,042, in 2008. According to my back of the envelope calculations, if 1,000 of NYU’s 21,000 undergrads are required to earn credits for their summer internships, the school could make more than $1 million. Multiply that by thousands of colleges around the country, and the number balloons.
3. Because interns aren't considered employees by the Labor Department, it means they aren't eligible to sue under the workplace discrimination provision of the Civil Rights Act, which requires that the person pressing charges be considered an employee.
So, no, I don't think internships are fair. And, in some part, I hold universities responsible. Colleges grant academic credit for internships that they know very well are more jobs than mentoring environments. And by granting those credits, colleges allow employers to skirt FLSA. But, students want internships and creating those opportunities makes colleges attractive. Companies want good relationships with attractive employers so that they can tell perspective students that they can intern with the country’s biggest names. And, so it goes.
However, universities could band together, and acting as educational institutions, they could take a stand and say, "No more credit for illegitimate internships." Perhaps, forced into a legal cor
#1 Posted by Katia Bachko, CJR on Tue 5 May 2009 at 03:43 PM
I always thought internships perpetuated class stratification: Those students who cannot afford to work for free as interns are then less well positioned for jobs after graduation and have less experience in their field. And those students who CAN work for free usually only have that option because their parents can afford to support then while they're doing so. I had to turn down a few opportunities, both in college and in graduate school, because I need to work for the stuff that will help me pay my rent now.
#2 Posted by Laura Krier, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 07:24 AM
I agree that internships probably perpetuate class stratification, but banning them doesn't seem like the best way to lessen that stratification. Equally as important, however, banning internships just doesn't seem very plausible either--or at least not substantially more plausible than lessening class stratification by, say, offering basically free college education for all, which we actually should pursue.
I'm sure Katia's project was interesting as a legal matter, but I wonder what economic insights it might have turned up. Here's the important question, to my mind: in the long run, if colleges couldn't have free internships like those above, would they pay for the labor or forgo it all together?
This is basically the question we ask when we wonder whether to pass minimum-wage laws generally. Will it mostly mean the jobs will disappear, or will it mostly mean that wages will seemingly miraculously rise? If the former, then the market was likely efficient before (to say nothing about just). If the latter, then the market was likely inefficient before, with an imbalance of bargaining power depressing wages.
#3 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 11:10 AM
Hey Josh--It doesn't sound like I explained myself well. I'm not saying colleges have unpaid interns, I'm saying, colleges award credit for unpaid internships performed at magazines, and all over, really.
As to your questions about economic impact, I think every person who has ever worked anywhere--except a nonprofit like CJR maybe--could point to examples of corporate excess, that, if curbed, could pay minimum wage for summer interns.
By and large, I think it's this corporate culture illusion that there's no money to pay interns, especially at the glossies. If you want a full-time intern for fifteen weeks, that'll cost you $4290 a head. Which seems like a lot, but not when you consider the thousands of dollars that magazines shell out for celebrity photographers, make-up artists, re-touchers, etc, I'm pretty confident that they could find the money, and arguably, produce a more culturally ethical magazine. But that's another story.
And, newspapers, too, aren't innocent.There's plenty of wasteful spending in every office.
So, I really do think the money is there. But, I think it's more than just the numbers. I think it has to do with this generational thing, in which, every class of editors says, "well, I had to be unpaid intern, so you guys have to do it, too."
So, Josh, to your question, I think, it's definitely the latter: imbalance of bargaining power, to the max.
#4 Posted by Katia Bachko, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 12:04 PM
I agree. Most businesses don't pay for interns because it seems okay to do follow precedent. And that's too bad. And, frankly, more than a little shameful on the whole.
But there cases like CJR. I didn't get paid when I interned for the Washington Monthly. But the Monthly probably couldn't have afforded to pay me either. So what do we think about these more difficult cases, in which the small outfit would probably choose to go without the intern all together if the alternative were having to cough up a decent salary?
#5 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 01:44 PM
As a journalism undergrad, I've interned at a few places - including CJR for the past year - all for no compensation, unless I was published as a freelancer. I think internships provide invaluable on-the-job experience that can't be gained from classrooms themselves.
However, at the same time, financial constraints often prevent some students from taking advantage of opportunities, as was mentioned before. I, myself, have balanced a paying job, a full-time course load, AND two internships during one semester, so I know the pressures that an undergrad trying to take advantage of all opportunities possible feels.
Personally, I think as long as the internship is providing actual experience and training, the chance to work alongside professionals is invaluable. The trouble arises when an intern is used for nothing more than the coffee and mail person. While a salary would undoubtedly be helpful for struggling students, sometimes we must sacrifice to advance ourselves professionally.
#6 Posted by Megan McGinley, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 03:07 PM
Of course they aren't fair. When has working for free ever been fair? Employers are simply exploiting the fact that these students are desperate for experience and a chance at a full time job. Even worse now is that internships are absolutely no guarantee of a job anymore, so these students are doing scut work for free and get some clips out of it... and then what? No job. Making connections and recommendations, having a couple of months experience with a few clips - that's just not enough to get a job anymore. There are tons of veteran journalists out there who are out of work and competing with the newbies.
Others have already explored the issue of unpaid internships not being an option for those who are struggling financially, which is a valid point.
And frankly, you get what you pay for. I'm sure some people feel bitter and unmotivated at an internship they aren't getting paid for, and I'm sure the work suffers.
#7 Posted by Former jschool students, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 05:54 PM
I have been the internship coordinator at the LSU School of Mass Communication for 14 years and have always been distressed by employers who haven't paid interns--at least minimum wage. Heretofore, however, almost all newspapers paid; broadcasters, however, never did and haven't started...
I believe that a well monitored internship experience is a valuable opportunity for a student so I remain firmly committed to the principle that every student should be engaged in at least one during his/her college career. Our students may only take an internship for credit after fulfilling certain prerequisites so they assure the employer of coming with certain basic abilities.
And I'm just as firmly committed to "strongly encouraging" employers to pay at least minimum wage, just to indicate that they do value the student's contribution.
#8 Posted by M.A. Sternberg, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 06:05 PM
An intern is required at CUNY J-School's summer term. If the internship is unpaid, CUNY pays the student for the summer. That's a pretty sweet deal for everyone concerned, especially the employer. With all of the cutbacks in the industry, plenty of employers are filling out their workforce with unpaid interns. As an intern at my current spot, I easily do what someone who (not that long ago) was employed at this same company did. And probably even more than he did. So not only is CUNY subsidizing the students, it's also subsidizing the industry. But this company can't afford to hire me, no matter how great a job I do. They are just going to get another intern.
#9 Posted by Sam, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 10:09 PM
I've both interned and supervised interns, and it's been mostly very positive, but structurally, it's an unfortunate system in many of the ways already articulated.
The idea of the apprentice-style internship, where a full-time position is a very real possibility, seems to be rare, though I did witness it succeed once.
Also, I'm always surprised when I learn that people with graduate degrees are occupying internships that would have been filled by plucky undergrads a few years ago. Of course, some of these internships more closely resemble fellowships (some longer than a summer, some decently-paid), but not all. When people taking internships are far too qualified, it sort of degrades the degree, don't you think? And what are these plucky undergrads doing now that they're competing with grad school grads?
One setup that worked well at the nonprofit I used to work at was hosting foundation-funded interns who were paid by a separate organization for working in a placement at our organization (for instance the Watson Fellowship, the Korean American League for Civic Action KALCA, and--if I'm remembering correctly--the Century Foundation).
#10 Posted by Sydney, CJR on Wed 6 May 2009 at 11:03 PM
My general feeling is that unpaid internships are ridiculous and abusive.
Long story:
When did "internships" in Canada, in engineering school, they were more like temporary jobs, and they involved a lot of practical learning that was impossible to get in school.
Some paid very well, and the best were usually U.S.-based military contractors or software giants. Nortel, in Ottawa, used to hire so many "interns" that they had resources devoted to running socializing programs for us -- pool tournaments and the like.
The other, I'd argue nobler, medical or physics research positions were still paid, but only because the government of Canada allowed national science research grants to fund them. In either case, the pay was enough to live on and usually enough to carry over to help pay for the next term back at school.
After Silicon Valley crashed (around the year 2000), a lot of the companies that offered tech-internship opportunities lost their budgets, while others simply went under.
So what happened? There weren't enough jobs for all the students to get their mandatory work terms into their degrees, and the school I attended dropped the requirement. It would have come down to too many students not meeting graduation requirements because of an outside economic condition. Or, it might have come down to the creation of unpaid internships, which sort of goes against the notion that engineers have of themselves as valued professionals.
Short story:
A company pays you in exchange for your time. Your skills and value determine how much your time is worth to them, compared to someone else's time. But in the end any job (whether you enjoy it or not) is you selling little chunks of your life, chunks you'll never get back, off to someone else.
Are some parts of your life worth nothing? How insulting for a magazine (or newspaper, or TV station) to think so.
I'm graduating from Columbia Journalism this May, and I will not be accepting work that is beneath my skill level or a job that won't allow me to meet my modest financial needs.
#11 Posted by Rhiannon Coppin, CJR on Thu 7 May 2009 at 11:22 AM
Way back in the spring of 1974, as part of my Newswriting class at UNC-Chapel Hill, I had an internship on the Raleigh Times (now defunct) in Raleigh, NC. I drove to Raleigh from Chapel Hill twice a week in the days of the Nixon gas crisis -- we got in line at 6 a.m. for half a tank of the precious liquid. Thank goodness I drove a VW bug.
My internship was not paid, so I suppose my folks picked up the gas tab. I'd hoped by doing the unpaid spring internship that I'd have a shot at a paid summer internship. The editor didn't like it one day when I said the word "PR" during a conversation -- noting I wasn't certain whether I'd work in newspapers or PR (my journalism major dad had been in public information for the Navy most of his career). Soon I was out of the running for the summer internship. I spent my summer in the Ladies Sportswear Dept. at Hudson Belk department store. There I got paid minimum wage and a discount on clothing! But I earned an "A" in that Newswriting class under the venerable Walter Spearman!
A year later, as I was frantically searching for a job -- my bedroom at home had already been turned over to my baby sister and my dad expected me to have one -- it was the clips from that semester I worked for free at the Raleigh Times, as well as my stories in UNC's The Daily Tar Heel, that got me a job on a small weekly community nedwspaper. I almost didn't graduate from UNC because I couldn't pass NC History, but the editor didn't care because he saw from my clips that I could write.
When that diploma was placed in my hot little hands, I was one of only a handful of graduates in my class who actually had a job to go to. Among those grads were Pulitzer Prize winner Joel Brinkley, Pulitzer Prize winner John Woestendiek, and Tom Boney Jr. (still a journalist) and Bill Dennis (now an MD), whose families had long-owned the Alamance (Burlington, NC) News and Henderson (NC) Daily Dispatch, respectively, both decent small-town newspapers.
The best job I ever had in terms of learning what goes into producing a newspaper was that year at The Messenger in Madison, NC -- the staff not only folded the sections as they came off the press, I had a paper route! Delivering the newspapers to the racks in the surrounding area's rural grocery stoers and gas stations gave me a chance to get to know the people I wrote about, and often provided me with good news tips.
Did the Raleigh Times get something for free? Sure, but I got far more than its staff ever got from me.
When the time came for my daughter to work internships while in college in 2000-2004, we encouraged her to take the ones she wanted, even if they were unpaid. I already knew the importance. She wound up working for a year after graduation at the place where she did her last -- unpaid -- internship. The contacts she made have been invaluable as she works freelance in the world of film production.
Today especially, job hunting all about networking and having what is so hard to get: experience. Sure, those who offer internships benefit from the work that the students do, but there's a lot of teaching that goes on, as well. Maybe students need to pay tuition for all that knowledge that is imparted!!
Me? I'm freelance writing, working on a couple of non-fiction history books, and teaching English and Intro to Journalism at a community college, as well as advising our small, but well-written, student newspaper. And somewhere in a box, I still have my stories from the Raleigh Times -- one about a college professor re-writing "Hamlet", another about a man who in retirement became quite good at carving ducks from wood, another about the first bike trails opened in the state. There were more -- but they have slipped my aging mind!
Best,
Suzy Barile
#12 Posted by Suzy Barile, CJR on Thu 7 May 2009 at 04:41 PM
"it was the clips from that semester I worked for free at the Raleigh Times, as well as my stories in UNC's The Daily Tar Heel, that got me a job on a small weekly community nedwspaper."
The problem is that it doesn't work like that anymore. I've had two awesome internships--one paid, one unpaid--at an alt-weekly and public radio station and I'm about to graduate. I can't get a job at all, and one of the places I interned at is in bankruptcy protection and the other has a "zero growth budget" for the foreseeable future. "We'd love to have you back as an intern," they tell me. Great, but I need to pay the rent. It seems crushingly MORE unfair now to ask people to work for free when there's less and less of a chance of those clips turning into jobs.
#13 Posted by KB, CJR on Thu 14 May 2009 at 04:43 PM
This article highlights a phenomenon that 2 friends and I have come to call the syndrome of “The Eternal Intern”. http://www.the-eternal-intern.blogspot.com...
Each of us, victims of this new phenomenon, are in fact Eternal Interns. We started a blog a little while ago to chronicle both the uncertainties and joys of life as Eternal Interns.
Our blog retraces the story of three talented, chic, fabulous, multi-lingual, over-educated, ambitious, twenty-something interns and their escapades at the most exclusive fashion, art, and entertainment houses in the city of angels, the city of lights and the big apple...
Please take a look…yes being an Eternal Intern can sometimes be tough…but it can also be fabulous. Try to make the best of any situation.
http://www.the-eternal-intern.blogspot.com...
#14 Posted by The Eternal Intern, CJR on Sun 13 Dec 2009 at 09:14 AM
As a practicing attorney who takes on summer interns out of the goodness of my heart... Let me tell the flip-side of this intern saga so that you slackers can get some perspective...
1, Interns are dumbasses (a term of endearment). They don't know anything useful and they can't do anything to make money. Their academic education is hindrance in that they think they know more than they do- thus the smartest ones are the biggest dumbasses. If they weren't dumbasses, they wouldn't be interns. Any work they do, I have to supervise, correct and explain. It's a net loss of time.
2. Interns are dangerous. They don't give a crap, they aren't bought in, but they come with all the liabilities of any employee, plus others related to their dumassitude.
3. Interns are expensive. They park their dumbass butts behind expensive desks on expensive real estate and hop on craigslist on my expensive computers on my expensive networks. They suck up billable time (one hour of my time is worth twenty hours of theirs).
The interns who come to work for me get real legal and business experience for free. It's a bargain that has them tripping over themselves to get a placement in my office. They sure aren't doing me any favors - though I do enjoy helping them.
#15 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 13 Dec 2009 at 08:16 PM