Internment

It's the summer, which means it's time for poor students to find jobs and rich students to work unpaid internships.

Interesting conversation going on at the American Prospect about unpaid internships. I've always seen this as an abusive system. Large companies use their famous brand names and the promise of future occupation to lure in young people to do work for free.

I understand that internship, like apprenticeships of the past, can serve a grand purpose. And of course the experiences of interns vary widely. I'm sure several people reading this right now worked internships back in college that provided invaluable insight into their chosen career path and were happy to do the job for nothing. But if you were doing valuable work for that company, shouldn't you be repaid for that work on some way? And if the work you were doing wasn't valuable enough to warrant a salary, was it valuable enough to serve some purpose later in life provided the company doesn't actually hire you?

I worked a few journalism-themed internships back in my day, but almost all were paid save one...PREMIERE Magazine hired me as an intern two years running, for a grand total of about 20 months of unpaid service.

Now, during that time, I was asked to write one (1) actual PREMIERE article, for which I was paid around $200. Also, I managed to work, on the side, a couple of research jobs. One guy, author Peter Biskind of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls fame, hired me to do research for a book that has since come out and never actually paid me a dime or credited me in any way. He's swell!

PREMIERE had this charming policy during that time in which they pretended to let me pitch ideas for articles. The only problem was that this particular magazine is prepared several months in advance, and I was never invited to screenings of upcoming films. So, essentially, material success at the internship would have required me to find my own sources in the entertainment business, interview them under the guise of an actual PREMIERE reporter, arrange personal screenings of upcoming films, pitch the article unsolicited to the editor and then write the thing on my own time.

Now, at 27 I can look back and say, "yeah, that's what I should have done. Be more proactive." But I was 18 years old, people. I was kind of hoping for a little guidance or direction. I was, after all, working for around 20 hours a week for these people for no money.

In truth, this is a one-sided view of the internship because I'm leading up to a point here. In fact, I did get to know a few entertainment writers and learn about magazine production during those years. Plus, there are some funny stories. And I got to see The Blair Witch Project early before it got really popular and, therefore, lame.

But I wouldn't say I was up on that particular deal. I answered their phones, sealed their envelopes, transcribed their tapes and in general helped out around their office for almost 2 years, and in return I got one published article to add to my clippings. For a real job at a newspaper, they tend to request 5-7 work samples, so I'd need to complete at least 4 more internships at actual publications to fulfill this requirement.

Which finally leads me to my point. An unpaid internship such as the one I enjoyed at PREMIERE is useful only if you eventually get hired by the company or make connections that get you hired elsewhere. (For the record, even though they said they would still listen to my story pitches, I had no delusions about being hired at PREMIERE once the internship was over. After a month or so, they stopped even returning my calls. Interestingly, many of the people I worked with then have gone on to big, impressive careers, including John Horn who ended up breaking that fake-Sony-film-reviewer story for Newsweek, Anne Thompson who writes for the Hollywood Reporter and appeared this year on the Oscar pre-show and Rachel Abramowitz, who has since had a book published and writes for the LA Times.)

For everyone else, you learn a few things about work in one specific office and maybe pad your resume, but you hardly earn back a summer or a year's salary. Most internships are concerned with fetching coffee, running errands and generally doing the work no one else wants to do. (During the brief period I worked in PR, the interns in our office cut and pasted articles out of magazines into binders.) They are useful in terms of the ugly business of "networking" and nothing else, and if the people who are hiring you don't intend to help you make connections or to hire you themselves, they are essentially ripping you off.

The other major issue here is that unpaid internships perpetuate a strong class divide. Who can afford to spend months at a time working for a company for free? People who don't have to pay rent. You know, rich kids. Granted, paying a low wage for a high-profile internship might have a similar effect, but so long as someone could reasonably support themselves meagerly in the city in question, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

I've told this particular anecdote on the blog before, but it bears repeating. A few months ago, I called the editor of City Beat Magazine here in LA to ask about possible employment. It's a small, free paper, and struck me as a good place to attempt to re-enter the exciting field of getting paid to write stuff. She told me that City Beat was not hiring, and that based on my resume, they probably wouldn't hire me anyway. (Bear in mind, she hadn't looked at a thing that I had actually written.)

I asked what she thought I could do practically to make myself more enticing for a newspaper like City Beat. She suggested I intern somewhere for free. Seriously.

I'm 27 years old and I have nothing. Working for a while without compensation is about as feasible a life plan as working in Willy Wonka's Factory and retiring to Fantasy Island. What was this idiot talking about? Intern?!

Now, I'm not saying she had to hire me. Maybe she would have read my clips and thought they sucked. Or maybe the clips that I have are too old and she would have said that I should try to write for a smaller paper than City Beat, maybe in a smaller market than Los Angeles, to build up a body of work. Those would have been reasonable enough suggestions. (I've thought about moving out of LA to find work at a smaller paper many times, but just need to stick around for the screenwriting at this point.)

But to suggest that I should be someone's slave for a year in order to earn her grudging respect? Without even having seen my work? Is this what the unpaid internship has come to? Because that, to me, doesnt' sound like being an intern. It sounds like indentured servitude.

To be honest, though, my problems with internships relate to the larger and unsolvable problem I have with networking in general. Every job I have ever had is all about getting along with the people you work with and not at all about doing good work. Ever. Down to a job. Which sucks, particularly because it means people get hired for jobs because they are likable and not qualified. So you have to spend your whole life making sure everyone who knows you, even remotely, thinks you are likable in case one of them can ever get you a good job. And then once you get hired, you just have to create the illusion of hard work and you're home free.

Of all my efforts to find work in the past, just meeting and talking to a variety of people have been by far the most successful. And I've gotten a fair number of good jobs in the past. I'm employed at a video store now not for lack of employability but hatred of work. But journalism and the entertainment industry involve such complex and nimble structures of networking, it's almost impossible to navigate without the OnStar system.

Which, I suppose, is where the internships come in. You want these people to know you before they hire you, so I guess the theory is that you just hang out for long enough. The problem is that it doesn't always work, and then you've spent 2 years getting coffee for no good reason like a schnook.