New twist on internships
I had a call from the Philadelphia Inquirer a few days ago announcing a change in its internship policy. No longer will interns compete for 12 coveted paid internships on the Inquirer. Instead, the Inquirer has decided it can no longer afford to pay interns–but union contracts also don’t allow the newspaper to let interns work without being paid.
The Inquirer now is asking journalism schools to pay the newspaper a stipend to support the internships. Each school that agrees to do so will have one guaranteed internship.
This raises several questions about the future of internships. Will other news organizations introduce such a policy? If so, this could be the end of internships for journalism students. JOMC has at least 200 students interning every summer. There is no way the School can fund those–nor should internships be funded by university journalism programs.
Ideally, all student interns should be paid by news organizations. Students have valuable skills, they work hard, and news organizations get the benefit of their labor. But the reality is that news organizations increasingly ask them to work for free. Even so, students want to compete for good internships and they receive college credit.
UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication won’t be participating in the Inquirer’s program. I hope the Inquirer’s approach is not adopted by other news organizations.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:00 am
When companies start cutting back on R & D they are in serious trouble. Internships are R & D - an investment in the future of your industry. As an industry we’ve never thought much of R & D and that’s in part why we’re paying the price.
And what will this do to all the interns from schools that can’t afford to pay - or from families that can’t afford to bankroll a child for the summer?
October 13th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I’m glad that the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication won’t be participating in the Inquirer’s program. It’s true that internships provide a valuable service to students, but at the same time students provide news organizations with research, writing and reporting services. It’s exploitative to insist that students work for free. It’s chutzpah to ask the students’ schools to pay a stipend to support the news organizations’ internships.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
[...] New twist on internships. The Philadelphia Inquirer to j-schools: we’ll give you an internship spot if you pay us. One of the effects of the decline of newspapers. [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
[...] dean of the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, bemoans The Philadelphia Inquirer’s decision to dissolve its paid internship program and its request [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Instead of equal pay for equal work it looks like the newspapers want work for no pay. A bad decision, indeed.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Oh so we can be worse than slave owners.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
[...] escola de jornalismo da Universidade da Carolina do Norte (Chapel Hill), Jean Folkerts, acaba de tornar públicos sinais de uma mudança de atitude de algumas empresas jornalísticas norte-americanas relativamente [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Hold on here. I had two unpaid newsroom internships in college, one of which I paid tuition for because I was receiving college credit. If colleges are going to demand regular, per-credit tuition rates from students working at internships, why shouldn’t some of that money go toward paying students?
October 14th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Wow that’s sad news. I spent this summer as an intern for them. It was a great experience. I learned a lot from some great people, and a paper that size is excellent resume candy. I’d say it’s worth doing free if it didn’t cost so dang much to live on the East Coast.
But if you can afford it, I definitely recommend interning for them.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:02 am
http://www.mije.org/richardprince/who-should-pay-cost-internships
October 14th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Ah, yes. Big salaries for executives but no compensation for lowly interns. Wouldn’t want to hurt the CEO’s lunch budget and shoeshine tips, would we? My bet is the interns are more productive, too.
October 15th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I had four paid internships when I was in college for photojournalism. I could *NEVER* imagine taking an unpaid internship. I still recall getting union wages at the St. Louis P-D as a ‘lowly’ intern.
The starving artist route, while dramatic, is just that–dramatic. If you give it away they will come to expect it for free. It’s silly business sense-period.
Why oh why are newspapers in such straits? They gave it away on the internet from the beginning… what do they expect?
It’s a beautifully flawed business. A wonderful profession that will be filled with over worked people unable to produce quality journalism. I loved my decade as a photojournalist.
I applaud UNC for saying ‘no’ to paying students to work at a newspaper. But there is no doubt lines of wanna-be writers and photogs will vie for an unpaid slot. In doing so they devalue the industry all around.
It’s sad how far and how quickly it has fallen.
October 19th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
[...] has been a fair amount of comment about my previous post, “New Twists on Internships,” both in the comments here, on Romanesko and in Richard Griffin’s column, [...]
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 am
I too agree with luke,if we are getting a good knowledge without any pay..its wise to go for it for a while…