1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Growth of unpaid internships probably illegal

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Babs, Apr 2, 2010.

  1. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Our shop eliminated internships a few years ago because of the pay issue.

    We gained nothing from the interns, so there was no reason to pay them. Those interns used to get a good learning experience for class credit, and now they don't.

    Not sure who won here.
     
  2. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Very true. I can't say too much because back in my university days I did a summer internship for no money, just course credit.

    It's a time-honored tradition. I'm not going to argue the morals of it. But I will say no one forced me to do it. I could have sat at home playing video games or gone back to fast food for $5 per hour. So I have no one to blame but myself. My only real regret was taking the first thing that came along and not being more selective. If I was going to work for free, I could have found a better place to do so.
     
  3. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    But are robot interns illegal?
     
  4. Answering phones is definitely a job that requires a college degree. Sorry, but when papers across the country hire kids to take calls, you can't use the argument unpaid interns are acquiring valuable experience.
     
  5. JimmyHoward33

    JimmyHoward33 Well-Known Member

    I should clarify, answering phones as in taking scores and writing them up. Not just taking messages or setting up lunches.

    It's all stuff that we do anyway, but it sure helps having an extra body on the desk. Does it add value to the company in the strictest sense? I suppose. But I cut my teeth doing it and I don't think its wrong. It would be to string a kid along doing this for no pay for a year or more, but one semester in conjunction with a class to me seems reasonable enough.
     
  6. SnarkShark

    SnarkShark Well-Known Member

    And by earn it, I mean work without earning money.
     
  7. Cyrus

    Cyrus Member

    I'm just stopping by to agree with every word you've said, and surprisingly I'm a slightly moderate liberal. Allowing businesses to not pay people for work is one of the most core personal human rights issues. Privilege at its base does not get any more than "are you lucky enough to be able to work for free?" Because there are billions of people who aren't.
     
  8. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Well, those unpaid internships should be for college credit, so the "can't work for free" argument doesn't hold a lot of weight for me. It's essentially a class. Depending on the hours at the internship, it can be a pretty even trade that's invaluable to the student.

    Having said that, I have a big problem with unpaid internships where the interns are performing needed tasks for the newsroom. My interns made my job more difficult. I was happy to work with them, but they weren't taking someone's job by being there -- more often than not they were writing stories for my newscast, and I would spend 5 minutes working with them on a script I could have written myself in two minutes.

    In my first shop, a number of newsroom employees were laid off (including me) and interns were scheduled to do some of those jobs starting the next day. They actually laid off the sole assignment editor and made that an unpaid intern position. That's unconscionable.
     
  9. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I had two newspaper internships. One paid I think $300 a week and the other, I hit the motherlode at $500. This was in the early '90s. They offered great experience, they were great on my resume and they gave me a leg up at a very competitive time in the industry. Plus I had beer money.

    If they were unpaid, I never could have taken them. I would have been back in the door factory making $6.20 an hour plus overtime. And I was in no way underprivileged. We were solidly middle-class or maybe above.

    As college costs have gone up, even a low-paying internship is geared to the wealthy. An unpaid internship is exclusively theirs.
     
  10. NQLBLQ

    NQLBLQ Member

    Point made. But let us be real, my work wasn't WORTH the money most times. As PC said above, intern work is usually not up to professional level and people spend time working with the interns to help them get better. Or at least that was my experience.

    Example: I was the "runner" for a summer league baseball team's play-by-play guy. I'd grab stats, let him know who was up in the bullpen, etc. I even got to call part of a game one day. In return, he said, "ask me anything. I'll answer it." At the time I was considering a career in play-by-play so it was a GREAT experience.

    Can anyone say they would EXPECT to be paid for that at 19 years old?
     
  11. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    In a perfect world, I think paid internships are better than unpaid internships.

    In the real world, I know that the alternative to an unpaid internship will be no internship, 99% of the time. Like I said, when the lawyers raised concerns about our interns being unpaid, my company immediately eliminated the internship program. I don't blame them at all, because there's no reason to pay the interns when they are the ones benefiting, and not the company. That's not the case in many internships, but it was for all of ours.

    I got into this business through an unpaid internship. The week it ended I was hired part time, and the week I graduated I was hired full time. I would not have had that job without the unpaid internship.

    We had interns who drove their BMWs to the station. We also had interns that rode buses to get to the station. So, yeah, it was a hell of a lot easier for the wealthy, but other kids made it work too. They can't anymore, though.
     
  12. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I do remember all the broadcast students bitching about the unpaid internships, come to think of it. Served 'em right. :)

    Seriously, though, I do also remember that anyone going places in broadcast (and this was out of Mizzou) was pretty wealthy to begin with. Needed parental support both for the internships and the first $14K-a-year job. That industry has grown up around the idea.

    Internships have taken on such a different form now. In addition to hurting the kid, they're also hurting the job market as a whole -- a lot of times that unpaid intern really is doing work that would otherwise need to be done by a paid employee, often full-time.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page