My foot in the door: Fortunately, it was paid.
When I got into the world of journalism, my first “real” job was paid. Not an internship. And I didn’t work for my school’s paper, either. But I always wonder to myself: What if that lifeline was unpaid? This is a discussion we need to have.
I won’t sugar-coat it. That my foot crossed the threshold into the crease of the door is pretty amazing, and I’m still, nine years later, sort of amazed it happened.
My first real-world newspaper experience was at a major metropolitan daily. I didn’t work at the student paper. But in the end, it all worked out—and it wouldn’t have, had I been stuck with an unpaid internship.
Tumult, frustration and heartache
First off, some backstory about myself and my situation: Though I don’t generally talk about it too much, my family situation was fairly rocky during my college years. In 2000, my dad passed away, a situation that was still quite raw for me in 2001, when I made the decision to transfer to Michigan State.
I went to jump head-first into journalism, but I found the task much harder than I expected. In the end, I ended up in a tight spot, unable to get the extracurricular experience I wanted and instead working in cafeterias, at third-shift on-campus jobs, and for one weird stretch that I recommend nobody else follow, at an off-campus Taco Bell that was open until 3 a.m. In a college town. On weekends.
I got decent grades, especially in my journalism classes, but getting out-of-class training was a major challenge. I tried and failed to get on at the student newspaper. Three times, in fact. The third time, I was well along in my senior year, and it looked like my chance had passed me by.
I was crushed. It had been a hard year. Eight months earlier, in early 2003, my family suffered another tough blow with the loss of my mom. I didn’t have a safety net to fall back on if this journalism thing didn’t work out. I was convinced I’d be wiping counter-tops for the rest of my life.
But instead of giving up, though, I persevered. I focused my efforts on design, a place where I felt my journalistic assets would fit best. I had some great professors at the time who were willing to help me polish my talents.
And I was active in an on-campus online publication called The Big Green. At first, it didn’t have a dedicated website, so I helped launch one. I created the site’s initial look and feel. The site’s still active today, but here’s what it looked like upon its 2004 launch:
Not bad for 2004. I think. The hard work was worth it though, because it was one of the things I threw on my portfolio disc. That disc came in handy.
One crazy weekend later …
In a weekend, everything changed.
Thanks to the influence of my amazing professors, I was active in the campus chapter of the Society for News Design, a group that focused on visual journalism and its value to the newsroom. The chapter holds an annual contest for student news designs, and that year the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel judged the entries.Which meant an out of state trip to a pretty big newsroom.
In a last-second decision, I decided that the online portfolio I was working on would be good enough for prime time, but—because every comeback story needs a dramatic turn—my CD burner was broken. In a last-ditch effort, I grabbed my roommate’s laptop (thinking he’d understand later), burned a couple of copies, then high-tailed it to the bus we took to the other side of Lake Michigan. I remember, as the headlights flashed past on the highway, the very album I was listening to for the first time: Songs of Leonard Cohen.
The introduction to L. Cohen was the second-best thing that happened all weekend.
The next morning’s judging was a blur of new faces and interesting pages. I was stupidly awkward and didn’t know how to deal with people at the time, so I overdressed to such a high degree that I got lightly-mocking comments from the journalists in the room.
Halfway through the day, a newspaper editor pointed out that temp positions would open up in the fall. Totally nervous, I hurriedly pulled out my resume and offered it up. The editor walked away, disc in hand.
Then, something amazing happened: Within ten minutes, I had been interviewed by four people. Within a month, I had a job.
It was paid. It was temporary, but it wasn’t an internship.
But the result is that I can tell people my first journalism job was at the largest paper in Wisconsin. I won’t lie: It took me a second to get up to speed. You don’t pick up a big-newsroom experience on the first day. But I eventually figured it out. And the whole experience gave me just the runway to create a career from.
Not everyone is so lucky. We should fix that.
When I ran across ProPublica’s Kickstarter—an effort to create a series of investigative reports on unpaid internships with the help of an intern that would be paid for by the Kickstarter—it hit a serious chord for me, especially this line:
But the news media have yet to take a really deep look at this emerging workforce. And protection for interns – especially unpaid interns – has fallen through the cracks. That’s why we’ve decided to investigate.
I kept thinking back to my own situation. What if things hadn’t worked out? What if my roommate didn’t leave his laptop unsecured in my dorm room? What if my portfolio wasn’t up to snuff? Where would I have been?
And, most importantly, what if the position I was offered was an unpaid internship? Could I have moved to Milwaukee, given my unusual (and extremely challenging) family circumstances?
I was lucky that I pulled it off. But there are so many people who weren’t fortunate enough to get a foot in the door like that—and those students need it just as much as I did in late 2004.
There are so many socioeconomic factors which can hurt the kind of great journalism that explains the world to our peers, that makes our society tick. (And for those who have read my other Medium pieces, this is not the same as writing for free to get your name out there. This goes much deeper.)
We need a site like ProPublica calling out the abuse of unpaid interns in nearly every field, because for every story like mine, there are ten stories where the internship that could have been wasn’t.
I admit it. I barely got my foot in the door. But I eventually did. And I’d hate to imagine that door closing on anyone, because that person couldn’t afford to work for free.
Consider donating to ProPublica’s Kickstarter. We need to change this.
Ernie Smith is the editor of ShortFormBlog, a social media journalist at McMurry/TMG, and a former newspaper guy who spent rounds at papers big and small.
