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My own first journalism job was as a direct result of an unpaid internship. I then went on to pay for my own NCTJ journalism course while working for the paper (they did, in fairness, pay me a wage while I was studying). If I hadn’t followed this route, I wouldn’t have got a foot on the ladder. This was way before I entered the field of science communication – this was just regular journalism c1997. Nicola Brown External Relations Director John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7UH T: +44 (0) 1603 450044 | M: +44 (0) 7920 274 120 F: +44 (0) 1603 450045 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | www.jic.ac.uk<http://www.jic.ac.uk/> | www.tsl.ac.uk<http://www.tsl.ac.uk/> From: Helga Groll <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Reply-To: "psci-com: on public engagement with science" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Date: Thursday, 2 January 2014 13:42 To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Unpaid internships Personally, I think unpaid internships are nowadays (sadly) a necessity and prerequisite in finding a paid job, in particular in the science communication community. And speaking from my own experience, I doubt that it is only reserved for rich kids who can afford to work for free. I am by no means wealthy, neither is my mother. I used my savings to do an unpaid internship, but in the end, it gave me valuable experience, references and a paid job. I am not in favour for unpaid work, but sadly, in the current fincancial climat I found myself competing with many other graduates after finishing my PhD, all with more or less similar levels of experience. I have followed the many discussions on this list about unpaid internships and whether they are fair or not, but I think we will just have to accept that any work related to science or science communication (again sadly) will not have the same status and financial support in society as other areas such as law, finance or economy, at least not in the near future. A huge number of the science communication jobs appear to be in the charity sector, and I think the name speaks for itself. Hardly any charitable organisation will be in the position to offer paid internships. Is it fair? No, but maybe the only way to change this is to make the science communication sector as attractive and important to society as possible, so that more funding will be available. In my opinion, we are halfway there, science communication and journalism have never been as popular. Happy new year :) Helga Twitter: https://twitter.com/NaturalArtiste Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NaturalArtiste instagram: http://instagram.com/naturalartiste# Blog: http://naturalartiste.blogspot.co.uk/ Gesendet: Donnerstag, 02. Januar 2014 um 14:37 Uhr Von: "Paul G Raven" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> An: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Betreff: Re: [PSCI-COM] Unpaid internships Meanwhile, here's a serendipitous extra piece of the puzzle: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/we-broke-the-internet The whole thing is worth a read, but here's the money-shot -- literally -- in the context of this discussion: "Everyone wants everything for free now—news, music, movies, etc.—which means the companies don’t have any money to pay people to produce original work. None of this is anything you haven’t heard before, but it bears repeating. In order to make a living, those of us who had the bad sense to shackle ourselves to a career in media before that world ended have to churn out more content faster than ever to make up for the drastically reduced pay scale. We’re left with the choice of spending a week reporting a story we’re actually proud of (as I do just frequently enough to ensure a somewhat restful sleep every other night), reaping a grand sum of somewhere in the ballpark of two hundred to five hundred dollars if we’re lucky, or we can grind out ten blog posts at twenty-five to fifty bucks a pop that take fifteen minutes each. That means the work across the board ends up being significantly more disposable, which in turn makes the readers value it less, which means they want to pay less for it, and so on. It’s an ouroboros of shit." PGR On 2 January 2014 13:14, Paul G Raven <[log in to unmask]> wrote: *sigh* On 1 January 2014 19:31, Michael Kenward <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Where is the evidence that the people on the journalists to watch benefited from unpaid internships. While it may be only circumstantial, having numerous contacts who work in the gearbox and oil-sump of the Stateside media machine supplies plenty of evidence; if you won't take an unpaid position in journalism, you won't get a position. Which means that if you can't afford to work for free for a few years (whether as an intern, or as a high-capacity self-promoting blogger who'll work for free "for the exposure") you're not getting your foot in the door. Hell, just google "journalism unpaid internships", and look at the number of articles that turn up; that's a lotta smoke from a non-existent fire, no? Perhaps they are all working class white folks with no rich parents to fund unpaid internships and who climbed the ladder in other ways. I'm not a gambling man, but I'd be willing to bet pretty much everything I own that this statement is provably false. The point isn't that it's *impossible* for the unprivileged to climb the ladder; the point is that a) it's always been harder, and b) it's getting radically harder for them to do so due to the unpaid internship system. The situation is more complex in the States, of course, where race carries the same explosive political charge as class does for us on this side of the pond... but as far as privilege goes, well, your response here -- coming as it does from an experienced white male journalist who did his degrees in the late sixties, which were a golden age by comparison with today as far as free-to-air higher ed and a social safety-net are concerned, and which are another world entirely away from the experience of an American POC during the same period -- is pretty much a textbook case thereof. This is not an insult; privilege is defined by its invisibility to its beneficiaries. I'd just like to suggest that perhaps, when the working class, women, or people of colour are in the conversational frame, it might be worth considering that your own perspectives on the issue may not be as informed or useful as you imagine them to be. And anyhow, to state that working class persons and persons of colour are disadvantaged when it comes to accessing the upper echelons of the employment market is not controversial; if anything, it's tautological. It is the extraordinary claim that carries the burden of proof, as a science journalist of long standing surely knows better than I; as such, can you provide evidence for the huge cohort of white working-class journalists in the States that you posit as an alternative explanation? PGR ********************************************************************** Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask] with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets) • set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday) • set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages) • signoff psci-com (to leave the list) • Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com Contact list owner at [log in to unmask] Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print ********************************************************************** ********************************************************************** Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets) • set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday) • set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages) • signoff psci-com (to leave the list) • Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com Contact list owner at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print ********************************************************************** ********************************************************************** Commands - send an email (any subject) to [log in to unmask] with one of the following messages (ignoring text in brackets) • set psci-com nomail (to stop receiving messages while on holiday) • set psci-com mail (to resume getting messages) • signoff psci-com (to leave the list) • Subscribe here https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com Contact list owner at [log in to unmask] Small print and JISCMail acceptable use policy https://sites.google.com/site/pscicomjiscmail/the-small-print **********************************************************************