Virtual Internships Just Aren’t the Same

Is she at her internship?

When I came across “An Internship From Your Couch,” I did a bit of a double take. In retrospect, I’m not sure why an article about working from home was quite so shocking. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I read it while sitting at my desk, in my office, at my internship.

The article explains that while these so-called virtual internships are still relatively rare, internships during which students never meet their boss or enter an office are becoming increasingly common. They are most widespread in technology and software development, and social media.

A virtual internship in social media? Wouldn’t being social mean going in to the office?

I confess that virtual internships offer opportunities to those students who attend schools far from major cities. But, I also believe that these students should have considered this factor when choosing a college.

At my school, NYU, internships are the norm. People, in part, choose NYU because of all the internship opportunities New York City offers. I imagine the same is true for schools in Boston, D.C, L.A, etc.

Sure, I’ve learned about research and blogging at my internships. These are undoubtedly important things to know. But, my greatest learning experiences have come from simply being in the office. In the thick of things, I can begin to understand how a company functions. It’s in those unoccupied moments, those times when I just listen, that I often get a better idea of the big picture. How can you do that while perched in bed with a laptop?

Are Interns Exploited?

I hope her boss appreciates how crazed she is!

This week, I spoke with several post-graduate magazine interns about their experiences. Our conversations were my attempt to understand their motivations for taking an internship after graduation, and whether their experience has measured up to their expectations. Along the way, I heard several disturbing stories.

Let me back-track for one moment. One of the questions I posed to all of the experts – career counselors, statisticians, etc. – was whether they believed corporations were taking advantage of post-graduate interns, or even of interns in general. After all, companies are getting work similar to that which they would from an assistant, but without having to provide salaries and benefits.

Their answers were resounding “nos.” Chandra Turner, the editor-in-chief of Parents and founder of Ed2010, explained,

“Anybody who has any amount of interns knows that’s how they got their start. It’s a training ground. Most magazine editors look at their interns, post-grad or not, as very vital to the magazine and it’s their job to be mentors.”

Jim O’Brien, the director of career services at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, reminded me that “unpaid internships are not a return to serfdom.”

As an intern myself, I’ve been lucky to have bosses much like those to whom Turner refers. But, in the course of my interviews, I spoke with a women’s magazine intern who gave me two, unfortunate examples of ungrateful, rude employers. She, who will remain anonymous for the sake of her future career prospects, said,

“When one person is not at her desk, one of the interns sits there and answers the phones and buzzes people in while she’s gone.  One day, I was sitting there while she was in a meeting, and when she got back, she snapped her fingers at me to leave.  Also, last week I was cutting pages out of magazines with an Exacto knife for the advertising person, and I was having trouble at first because I’ve never used an Exacto knife (when would I have done that? I was an English major!) and the blade was dull.  Anyway, a different person in the office noticed that I was having problems and goes ‘What’s going on over there? What are you, in elementary school? Didn’t you go to art school?’”

This intern also admitted that she felt like saying something, but didn’t. After all, what does someone do in that situation? Especially as an intern currently on the hunt for a job, you don’t want to piss off the people under whom you work. But, at what point do you stop tolerating poor treatment? Where, when it comes to your superiors, do you draw the line?

Obviously, that’s an age-old questions that isn’t new to me, this intern, post-graduate interns, or generation y. Since no one’s found the answer yet, I’ll place bets that generation z will be asking it too.

Shaking it Up at Condé Nast

4 Times Square, the Condé Nast Building

If they can’t pay their regular employees, chances are, they won’t return to paying their interns anytime soon.

Yesterday, I spoke about Pamela Noel, he director of career services at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and Jim O’Brien, the director of career services at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, each of whom expressed concerns about an increasing number of journalism internships becoming unpaid.

This morning, I woke up a New York Observer piece,“McKinsey Proffers Pie Graphs: Several Condé Mags to Cut ’25-ish Percent,'” which as may be evident from the title, shares more bad news.

Over the summer, Condé Nast called in McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s premiere management consulting firms, to help restructure its empire. Several months later, McKinsey has delivered its budget targets for 2010 to publishers and editors. Details, Traveler, Glamour, Gourmet, and Teen Vogue are on the short list of publications that will be asked to cut budgets by roughly 25 percent next year.

No one’s telling the head honchos at individual mags where to make these cuts but, layoffs are looking inevitable. Particularly at those publications not meeting their ad targets, frequency may be cut. While perhaps practical from a business perspective, this wont solve the industry’s problems.

If one of the great problems with magazines is that they are obsolete by time they hit newsstands, how can we expect a smaller staff AND less issues to make magazines profitable again?

The only good news to come out of this? There are no immediate plans to close any titles.

Will these magazines, and their continually shrinking editorial staffs demand more from their interns, all while withholding wages, or even a stipend? In the long run, will interns be expected to wear more and more hats – those of freelancers, assistants, and fact checkers – without financial reward? Will they agree to these terms?

I wish I had the answers. But, like those struggling at 4 Times Square, I only have a slew of questions.

The Perils of Internships

Look familiar?

Turns out, not everyone is gung-ho about post-graduate internships.

Yesterday, I spoke with Pamela Noel, the director of career services at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She quickly proved herself my first source who strongly opposes post-grad internships. She suggests that students consider freelancing after college rather than interning.

Noel also touched on a theme that has come up in several of my interviews: the phenomenon of unpaid internships in journalism. Speaking in terms of undergraduates, she said,

“There is much debate out there about how unpaid internships generally, whether it’s during the academic year, while you’re earning your degree or afterward, pushing your industry into a realm where it can only be avoided by people who have money anyway. And, whether you feel pro or con about it, you can’t dispute that some of that is happening.”

Let’s face it: magazine work isn’t anyone’s get rich quick scheme. But, until very recently, publications such as Newsday and those housed under the Condé Nast umbrella gave their interns some compensation. Now, they require academic credit. This means that not only are magazines not paying interns, but interns are paying their universities for course credit. During the fall and spring semesters, students often have enough credit that they can work in internships for no extra cost. This is not the case over the summer, something I know all too well.

Interns need something for their piggy banks

Last summer, I had the following conversation an innumerable amount of times:

Person X: What are you doing for the summer?

Me: I’m an editorial intern at Seventeen.

Person X: [impressed] Wow, that’s awesome! Do you love it?

Me: Yeah, it’s great! The people are wonderful and I’m learning so much.

Person X: Do they pay you?

Me: Nope.

Person X: Oh, that sucks.

Me: Actually, my parents are paying the university $1000 for me to intern.

Person X: That’s absurd.

Jim O’Brien, the director of career services at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism echoed Noel’s concerns. Although he is unsure whether the number of internships has increased, O’Brien has seen a transition from paid to unpaid internships, a phenomenon which he calls “disturbing, but understandable at the moment.”

Both Noel and O’Brien hope that as the economy improves, more paid journalism internships will emerge. But, as Noel wisely asks, “can that happen before the business model catches up and figures out how to make media pay again?”

The Waiting Game

Chandra Turner

This morning, in preparation for a story, I spoke with the ever helpful Chandra Turner. She is the editor-in-chief of Parents and the president and founder of Ed2010, a community of young magazine staffers. Turns out, she’s also big proponent of post-graduate interns. This is in part because,

“It’s very unlikely you’re gonna graduate on May 12^th and there’s gonna be an opportunity on May 13^th. We can’t anticipate hiring you. So, you can’t start looking for your job till right when you can start working. We’re so short staffed right now. We aren’t gonna wait for you to graduate and keep that position open.”

I aspire to be one of those future staffers; basically, I hope that in two years, you’ll find me slaving away at a major women’s mag as an editorial assistant. But, I’m also a chronic planner. Until today, it didn’t dawn upon me that my future career of choice meant living with such uncertainly. As someone who deals with her anxiety by taking care of things (sometimes, I cast myself as “the anti-procrastinator”), this is extraordinarily frightening.

I began interning at Seventeen this summer. Since my boss is responsible for the magazine’s love pages, much of my job involves finding quotable, delicious looking real guys. That means harassing everyone I know, and a whole lot of people whom I don’t know. With that comes a bit of a waiting game; I have to trust that others will follow through with me in time for my deadline. That’s a valuable lesson – maybe the greatest one of my internship thus far – but it’s difficult one for someone like me to learn.

It’s also one of the reasons that my journalism major is far more stressful than my English major. When I freak out about an English paper, I write it three weeks in advance. With a feature story, there are proposals to be turned in, interviews to schedule, conversations to have, research to do, and information to synthesize. I am forced to accept that loss of control.

It sounds like that’s going to be true with the big things too. Hopefully, I’ll get better at accepting it.

Dude, Where’s My Job?

Any offers? Any?

In the course of research for an upcoming article (stay tuned), I came across a series of unfortunate statistic. Yes, it turns out that there is out that there is an association specifically devoted to presenting bad news about our future job prospects.

Okay, I’m being a little harsh. They must provide good news sometimes. Perhaps I should blame the economy, rather than The National Association of College and Employers (NACE) for informing me that, in May 2009, only 19.7 percent of seniors received job offers. In 2007, 51 percent of college seniors secured jobs prior to graduation.

In good news, I don’t graduate until 2011. Here’s to hoping that none of you do either.

Lunging into the Fashion Biz

Need a boost?

It’s not like all of us future aspiring magazine journalists needed another reminder of our competition. But, low and behold, when I opened The New York Times Thursday Styles late last night, I was confronted with “Looking for a (Long) Leg Up.” Good thing I’m 6’, and have that 33 inch inseam.

Jokes aside, Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Amy Astley comments on the shift from youth aspiring to be models to striving to work in the fashion industry.

Times reporter Eric Wilson asserts:

“But this wave of Anna Wintours and Michael Korses in training is coming at a moment when the industry is shrinking; retailers are collapsing; several magazines within Teen Vogue’s parent company, Condé Nast, have closed; and jobs, of any sort, are scarce. A report last month from the NPD Group estimated that 12 percent of fashion companies will not survive the recession.”

After a series of the usual assurances that the world of fashion isn’t really all that glamorous, and that success requires hard work, the article glosses over the power of connections. I say glosses over because said point is made in a parenthetical paragraph. But, if my experiences as an intern at various magazines say anything, it’s that who you know is too important to render a side note. Astley, the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue is quick to say that “connections are not required at a publication that employs as many as 40 interns at a time.” I’m equally quick to wonder how many of those 40 interns had some kind of leg up.

The Marie Claire Fashion Closet

I’m in the early stages of a story on those completing post-graduate internships in the magazine industry. No less than five people have sent “Looking for a (Long) Leg Up” to me in the past twelve hours. They may be forwarding the article because they know of my own career aspirations. However, several read-throughs of it have supported my hypothesis about the kind of sacrifices college grads are willing to make simply to get one foot in the door of the Condé Nast building. Sometimes that price is no salary at all.