Here’s an opportunity for anyone with some free time this summer and no need for additional income. If you think that print journalism is in your future, take a peek at this listing from Craigslist:
Sactown magazine is currently seeking unpaid SUMMER editorial interns to start in late May/early June and continue until the end of the summer. For summer internships, full-time interns are preferred, but part-time interns (a minimum of three full days) are considered, including occasional evenings or weekends to cover local events. Interns will learn the art of magazine publishing, and since the edit staff is still small, interns will get more opportunities to write and work directly with the two editors-in-chief than at almost any other magazine. In addition to taking on some administrative duties, interns will receive practical experience in reporting, research, and fact checking, and will learn the mechanics of a creating a new magazine. Each intern will work closely with the editors, both of whom have extensive national magazine experience (InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, Money, Fortune, etc), on one or more sections of the magazine. This will be an exciting, fast-paced experience, and a great first-step in a journalism career.
If you are ambitious, creative, hard-working, and a self-starter, please apply to our program. Must be comfortable using the Mac Operating System. Please send a resume, cover letter and three published articles to intern@sactownmag.com.
E-mail only. No phone calls.
Maybe this isn’t exactly the forum, but I always felt that unpaid internships were just another way that kids from wealthy families got a leg up on everyone else. But, like I said, maybe that’s an argument for a different day.
The Sac Rag 
I always felt that unpaid internships were just another way that kids from wealthy families got a leg up on everyone else.
I could not disagree with that statement more. I did an unpaid internship with 100.5 The Zone last semester, and it was very hard, but rewarding, work. I don’t come from a wealthy family at allâ€â€in fact, during my internship the woman who provides for my education was forced into medical retirement from her job and now works at Wal-Mart of all places.
It has nothing to do with how much money a person makes or what their social status is. I sacrificed to meet my four-to-eight hour deadline every weekâ€â€sacrificed time that I could have spent hanging out with friends, family or my significant other. Sacrificed money that I could have spent on movies or eating dinner out or going on trip so that I could afford the gas to get from the Vacaville area to the Sacramento radio station twice, sometimes three or four times, a week.
I was given the internship, not because of my wealth status in life (you think people who work at Wal-Mart make a whole lot of money?) but because all of my hard work and dedication proved that I was worthy of an unpaid spot with a media company. And my story isn’t the only one like it. You take Cambi Brown, who was an intern with CW31 last year, and she’ll tell you that while she was finishing up her degree at Sac State and interning at CW31, she was also waiting tables at a restaurant just to make ends meet. You talk with Alan Sanchez at the same station, and he’ll tell you that there were many nights he slept in his car so he could make the trip from the Turlock area to Sacramento. Yeah, he’s a big time reporter now, but he also didn’t come from a wealthy family, and you look into how much sacrifice and dedication he had to put into his time as an intern.
I’m pretty insulted that all three of us worked our asses off to get where we are today, only to have ignorant people like you chock all of our hard work up to being “wealthy kids.” We’re not wealthy kidsâ€â€in fact, without internships, we probably wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on. And this is coming from someone who, this summer, is going to work harder and sacrifice more time to conduct a second semester, unpaid, internship.
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Ouch, I think someone touched a nerve.
I’m not disparaging the actual work that is done as part of any unpaid internships. I’m sure it is valuable and rewarding and hard work when it’s all said and done.
My issue is that many kids simply can’t afford to work for twenty hours a week without getting paid. For most kids who are in school, the summer is a time to beef up the paid hours and pay off their bills. It’s just so much easier for a kid whose family is paying the way to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. That’s what I’m saying here.
You, RM, have just offered a counter argument to mine in which you show how, through sacrifice, one can use the unpaid internship to get ahead in life. I find that admirable and a great example for other young people, and I hope someone like that gets the job with Sactown.
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Unpaid internships only show that the market is unwilling or unable to provide payment for the low level grunt work needed in that industry. Journalistic ethics- Snort. “InStyle?” If you are willing to sacrifice your time for no pay, what are you willing to sacrifice FOR pay?
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Kids that can’t afford to pay their bills without a part-time or full-time summer job are the same kind of kids who qualify for federal aide or financial aide for college. And most of them take advantage of that position. Their tuition is usually paid for in part or in full, and they find ways to make textbook costs work.
It’s very possible, and in my opinion a good idea, to take on a part-time job, enroll in one work-experience course over the summer, and work a part-time internship. Many people do feel bogged down by their lack of income. My solution: Earn college credits at one job, earn money at another.
Where there is a will, there is a way, and those who want to make something of themselves will always find a way.
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In my experience…professional experience is just as important as educational experience. I’ve never done an unpaid internship, but I could see someone rationalizing that, hey, rather than pay a college to get “experience” that is most likely irrelevant to their field, they could get experience without paying for it at an internship.
Of course, the trade off is that even useless academic credits will still count towards a degree…so if you are going to do an unpaid internship, make sure you’re pretty much set on going into that profession. But then again, work experience in general will help you get a job in another profession, too.
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You’re right – most people can’t afford to survive on an unpaid internship. That’s why I still worked a 40-hour-a-week job (and went to school full-time) when I did my SNR internship. It can be done – and not just by wealthy kids.
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As someone who knows many professional journalists, a little insight:
Those who go to journalism school who want to work as a professional reporter will get an internship at a daily paper somewhere. These are paid internships that usually last a summer or a semester. These internships are virtual REQUIREMENTS in order to move on to getting a permanent job as a reporter. Many students will complete more than one internship, as it is like having a “temp” job at a paper as a reporter.
Calling Sactown Magazine “print journalism” is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion.
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You go Radio!
I put myself through college and am still paying it back. I was a late bloomer. I worked full-time (all night), raised two sons, and went to college full-time. I didn’t sleep much. I did work hard..and for one semester I did an unpaid internship that really paid off as far as work experience. I eventually earned my masters degree…and to this day I don’t know how I did it. I found that the “kids” at school, whose parents paid their way, were less ambitious than those who had to do it alone.
Experience is experience. Good for you.
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I must disagree with sac-eats. I had an unpaid internship in college, and it was that experience that was instrumental in getting me into the career field that I have enjoyed for well over a dozen years.
Might I point out that I come from a family that is far from wealthy — at the time, my mom was putting both of us kids through college on a teacher’s salary while my father was plagued by cancer. I also had a paper route from age 11 until I transferred as a junior in college, plus a bakery job from age 16 until graduation.
I worked at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology (formerly known as the Lowie Museum), and my job consisted of cataloging various artifacts and recordings. I was able to relay this experience in my interview with a regional planning agency that also operated a data center where similar inventory methods were used.
Sure, it would be great if everyone could get paid to gain the experience to prepare him or her for a successful career, but it’s unfortunate that it doesn’t work that way.
Did you ever see Chris Gardner’s “The Pursuit of Happyness” movie?
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I could not do an unpaid internship because I had to work the whole time I was in journalism school. My parents’ income did not qualify me for financial aid, but they also refused to pay for my education, so I spent 4 years cleaning dorm bathrooms, working in restaurants, and doing telemarketing jobs. Then I had the good fortune to graduate during a recession.
After a year of marketing foreclosed properties for a government-seized savings and loan, and working nights at Macy’s so I could afford to buy clothes for my day job, I happened to pick up a weekly community paper which was horribly edited, and wrote a letter to the publisher offering to edit and proofread for free in exchange for a graduate school recommendation letter. She agreed and within a month I was putting the entire paper together–writing, editing, layout, even ad design. By then I had decided to return to school for a different career. But that silly unpaid internship got me a job at another newspaper which paid my way through graduate school.
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I did three unpaid internships during my college days. The first was with Legal Services working in a domestic violence clinic helping people fill out restraining orders. This was when I was studying to be a paralegal. It was fulfilling work, and taught me enough about the legal profession that I continued to pursue that field (even though I did not wind up there.)
The second was with the Animal Protection Institute as part of my poli-sci major. Again, fulfilling work, even though I was not looking to work in the field after graduation.
The third was with the SNR. This might have been the most valuable one, because it got my foot in the door to eventually do regular freelance work for them.
As these were all unpaid, I had to continue to work part-time jobs for income. Fortunately, they were also part-time internships so it worked out pretty easily. Yes, there was a certain amount of grunt work involved, but also some rewarding work too, and I very much enjoyed working with the people I met. I will also point out that I did not come from a wealthy family, and had to go the financial aid route throughout college, but I would not have traded those experiences for any income I could have otherwise been earning.
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“Kids that can’t afford to pay their bills without a part-time or full-time summer job are the same kind of kids who qualify for federal aide or financial aide for college.”
——————————————-
Not necessarily true. Some don’t qualify for aid because their parents make too much, and still have to work to live because the parents won’t hand out any money. It happens more than one would think.
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I also disagree with SacEats on his “only wealthy kids can afford unpaid internships” concept.
I too came from a family with money, sort of. (Dad was an MD.) But my parents were divorced and my mother had very little $$ and I was estranged from my father. Because of my estranged father’s income I did not qualify for financial aid, and so spent about 10 years working my way through CSUS’s for a journalism degree. During that time, among my many jobs was customer service at the Bee, from 6 a.m. to noon, which allowed me to take several unpaid internships, for about an extra 25-30 hours a week in addition to the 30 hours a week I was working for a salary. One of the most valuable unpaid gigs was working for Sacramento magazine (back when it was free, much like the SNR is now). I also did some freelance writing for local rags such as Suttertown News and several other alternative papers that are no longer around, for which I received small token payment, and built up my clip book.
So even if you are working your way through school, it is possible to swing at least a part time unpaid internship, and those internships provide actual hands-on experience that college alone usually can’t.
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Paige is right — I didn’t qualify for financial aid either because my parents “made too much.”
Ha.
Instead, I took care of my general education requirements at Sierra, then transferred to Berkeley as a junior. That way I could still get the UC education in the upper division courses, where it really counts, but be able to save money for the first two years by living at home, working two jobs, and through babysitting gigs. I was also only 16 until the very end of my senior year of high school, so that also played a factor in taking the community college/junior transfer route.
My Cal roommate and I were in the same major, and she and I read the same books and wrote the same papers during our freshman and sophomore years, but I paid only about $250/semester for classes and books.
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boo hoo! I’m poor! I had to work hard!
The point is that unpaid internships are a luxury that most people cannot afford.
Because there are exceptions to the rule does not make the rule invalid.
SacEats is smart everone else is dumb (except ST, hes a defenestrator fromthe old school)
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I don’t think that anyone who commented about what they did to accommodate their unpaid internships was complaining — it’s just a testament to the value of learning and gaining experience, plus the willingness and tenacity to make it all work. For me, I know to not take any paid job for granted or as some entitlement.
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P.S. Darned right I had to work hard — I still do and take a lot of pride in it. There is no “boo hoo” about it.
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Just as an idle question, what exactly is a “defenestrator?”
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I was waiting for “the snark”. I knew someone would have to chime in with some. Thanks adamant.
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I agree with Radio Matthew, where there is a will there is a way! When I was in college at Sac State I worked full-time managing a clothing store, went to school full-time, had a part-time UNPAID internship at a local radio station and still found time to play a role as philanthropy chair in my sorority. And to Runnergirl’s point, I’m not complaining at all. It was a great experience. I only wish my time management was what it use to be! 🙂
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