By Dioni L. Wise
The UNITY News Online

Internships. We all need them. It seems that you can’t find a job without them. But can young journalists financially afford to take an unpaid internship to get a few steps farther along their career path?

Last year, 23-year-old print journalist Jacqueline Lee sought an internship with one requirement: she must earn a paycheck.

“I was looking for a serious newspaper internship,” she said. “I didn’t really aggressively seek out the ones that weren’t paid…because I needed one that paid.”

Lee, a December graduate of the University of Southern California, had already worked for free. She couldn’t afford to do that again.

In the summer of 2006, she tirelessly worked two unpaid internships to get enough experience to make her portfolio worthy of sending to internship recruiters. She’s saved up enough money throughout the school year to afford gas for the two-hour commute from her Los Angeles home to the Santa Monica Daily Press.

“I didn’t have experience at that time, so I really didn’t have anything else,” she said. “I applied to other things, I just didn’t get them. It’s kind of ironic, like a Catch-22 because in order to get really good internships that do pay, you need experience.”

According to Lee, there are two kinds of good internships.

“The first kind is the one that’s not paid,” she said. “And the other kind that’s so good it’s unreachable.”

In order to attain a big internship, Lee thought she had to accept small, unpaid jobs first. Lee’s unpaid internships helped her land a Chips Quinn Scholarship and her current night cops beat at the Belleville News-Democrat.

“I feel like I had to take those steps so that I could get where I am today,” she said.

But Eugene Tapahe, Creative Web Developer for Brigham Young University, only accepted paid internships along his way to founding his company eTapahe Inventive Design and Images.

“I wanted to be of value where I went,” he said. “One of the big (internships I had), at ESPN: the Magazine, there was no way I would have taken that internship if it weren’t paid.”

He added, “If you’re more worried about where your next meal’s coming form, how are you going to focus on your work?”

Tapahe worked as the managing editor at the Navajo Times from 1995-2000. His policy was not to hire interns unless he could offer them a stipend.

“We paid them because, otherwise, they either showed up or not showed up,” he said. “They based their experience on what they were being paid.”

The interns’ work has monetary value.

“I paid them what they were worth because then I could use that to motivate them and say, ‘Hey, we’re paying you good money. We expect good things out of you.’ If they’re free, what can you do?”

Lee said her financially stable friend took on unpaid internships at well-known newspapers, such as the St. Petersburg Times. Her friend even had a car shipped to her cross country from California to Florida, something “unimaginable” to Lee.

“To not even make any money there or make enough to sustain yourself for the summer, that wasn’t an option because I always had to be making more just to pay for school or to pay for a few months ahead in the year,” Lee said. “So, I always had to stay close to home.”

Lee said the people who have enough money to afford unpaid internships already have relationships with the higher-ups. She said the cycle of the have-nots not having “keeps perpetuating itself.”

Associated Press reporter Monica Rhor said all AP internships are paid, as unpaid internships could discriminate from a poor socioeconomic status.

“The reason behind paying an intern is that you can’t get good quality candidates unless you pay them a good minimum wage,” she said. “Unless you pay people a minimum wage, you’re only getting a small portion of the interns, so you would only get people who are affluent or have some kind of money or who come from the same background.”

She said newsrooms need to be diversified- which includes socio-economically.

“If you pay people you can attract people from varied background,” Rhor said. “You know people who might not come from money who can bring a different kind of sensitivity to the organization.”

Rhor has mentored several young journalists who say the money factor plays a significant part in whether they can accept a prestigious internship.

“Some people have to turn down really good internships because they couldn’t afford to live in a city where the internship hired,” she said. “They miss out on the opportunity and the employer misses out on people who have potential.”

What do you think? Have you ever taken unpaid internships? What are the pros and cons of having an unpaid relationship?

topic: Industry Issues
tags: internships, paid internship, unpaid intenrship

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