ProPublica using an intern to investigate the intern's life

Little known fact: interns actually did all the work for Woodward and Bernstein

How’s life as an intern? Investigative research non-profit ProPublica wants to know if things are as bad as people talk about when they bitch about endless months of free labor for college credit or “experience.” And to do that, they’re…getting an intern to do it. This seems like a lot of effort for a little bit of irony.

Aside from doing work for free that years ago people got paid to do, realizing halfway through it that the place you’re interning for won’t be hiring you and the overall feeling of being taken advantage of, being an interne is great, yeah? ProPublica wants to hear intern stories, and to collect them all, they’re sending an intern around to college campuses around the country to tape them. Which seems like they’re cutting off a big swath of people who can’t actually afford to be interns, but then again, we aren’t the fancy investigative journalism non-profit.

Of course, unlike the internships that people accuse of being exploitative and just a way to get cheap labor, ProPublica is at least trying to raise money to pay for the intern to travel and their salary. Their WHAAA? Wonder how it’s gonna go over when the person collecting stories let’s it slip that she’s getting paid for her internship. ProPublica won’t be looking for this magical paid journalism intern unless they raise the money they need on Kickstarter, so in the meantime, tell them your sad internship story and maybe that will get you the job if this project goes forward.

4 Comments

Cribbster May 28, 2013

I’m pretty sure ProPublica is paying its intern. Most (decent) newspaper internships are paid.

May 28, 2013 at 3:12 pm

Reply
- David Colon May 28, 2013
  
  Hey, let’s be fair to the person being unfair here. I noted that they were raising money to pay a salary.
  
  May 28, 2013 at 3:16 pm
  
  Reply
  - Cribbster May 28, 2013
    
    I can’t be bothered to read the whole post here, David.
    
    May 28, 2013 at 4:29 pm
    
    Reply
    - Tim Donnelly May 28, 2013
      
      and thus some intern stole Cribbster’s job.
      
      May 28, 2013 at 5:27 pm
      
      Reply