I sometimes wonder about how ethical unpaid internships are, especially when it comes to journalism. I mean, I only have experience in unpaid journalism internships, so I’m probably a little biased. But I’ve also built a pretty good amount of experience with them.
My first internship was relatively low-intensity as far as internships go. I moderated a forum and pitched ideas for stories when they came to me. Everything was initiative-based, which had the advantage of allowing me lots of freedom, but the disadvantage of being completely unstructured. This kind of internship can go legitimately unpaid, I think. In my case, I wasn’t doing anything of great importance to the publication – just nice little superficial extras. I got some decent writing experience and established some good contacts in the biz. But not a whole lot else.
My second internship, though, was what I’d consider high-intensity. At the magazine (and I’m not naming names in both cases just to keep my name and magazine names from being connected unpleasantly in words) the interns’ main job is fact checking. In an effort to make the interns feel important, our supervisor went to lengths to stress how crucial thorough fact checking is. Okay, I understand this. Fact checking interns are indispensable. So why then are interns with such an important job treated, well, “dispensibly?” It would be one thing if we were in the office five or 10 hours a week. But our minimum time there is 15 hours a week. That’s a serious chunk of time to spend without much to show for it. The argument is that we get experience and clips. But I don’t see how a clip or two, plus the experience of getting lectured for less-than-explosive enthusiasm for unpaid work is worth almost 200 hours (the magazine’s program operates on 13-week semesters, not quarters). That’s more than a month of full-time work in exchange for a 300-word clip.
If fact checking is really so important (and boy do you hear about how important it is when you miss something), then why don’t interns receive any more compensation. I would make the argument that, at my current internship, the interns really don’t gain any more experience in “magazine publication” than they would if they just spent a day shadowing an editor. I mean, interns are the only ones who fact check. How is fact checking giving us magazine experience? We’re only getting the experience of an intern, and the whole point of being an intern is to not have to be an intern any more when you’re done. I realize that there certainly are benefits to just being in a magazine’s office day in and day out and rubbing elbows with the editors. In terms of practical knowledge though, I really don’t think we’re being paid very well.
I’m not saying that I want an hourly wage. I’m saying that if interns have such a crucial role in the publication of the magazine, why don’t we see more compensation? Someone who isn’t worth paying shouldn’t be given big responsibilities. The kind of compensation I’m looking for is job experience. Editors should let editorial interns shadow them. They should show them the process of writing a story. They should at least attempt to pay them with learning. Not just dump on them the tedious work that nobody else wants to do. I think it’s fine if an intern’s job is mostly tedious work that nobody else wants to do, but there needs to be some light at the end of the tunnel. There needs to be something to redeem that tedium – help working on a piece, some constructive criticism, a ride-along, etc. But if at the end of 200 hours you’re left holding 300 words on a page and a stack of magazines that you know contain zero errors, I think you’ve wasted a lot of time.
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