The summer of the apprentice

My favorite newspaper intern was an Indiana University coed. She was so good, she gave our journeyman reporters a run for their money.
We mainstreamed our apprentices at every paper where I had a say. No hazing or sending for coffee or demeaning with assignments. At the end of her summer run, I asked the IU intern if she would consider applying for a reporting job after her upcoming senior year. Clearly she could do the work already.
Thanks, she smiled. She enjoyed the opportunity. But now that she had seen the inside of journalism, she planned to change her major to chemical engineering.
I laughed and still maintain that was a successful experience. She found direction.
Most interns stay in the profession after the first stepping stone.
The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund is in its 50th year of recruiting and placing interns. I was one of its recruits in, shall we say, the first half of its history.
The Chips Quinn Scholars program of the Freedom Forum is another valuable portal, especially for minority interns.
My own multicultural Knight Fellowship in Community Journalism includes an intern segment. That’s to ensure our master’s degree Fellows polish their practical skills before they graduate.
So I totally disagree with The New Republic article by Adelle Waldman, “Why internships in journalism are bad for young people and bad for the industry.” She writes about magazine as well as newspaper opportunities.
Her image is grunt work for slave wages by the privileged young on a career track. The internship culture works against diversity, merit and talent, to believe her.
Not in my experience. Not in my observation. Not in best practices.
TNR’s writer is correct that internships are a rite of passage in media. I don’t know of a profession without entry portals and practices.
I spent my long ago internship writing all the obits in east Arkansas, west Tennessee and north Mississippi. The state editor insisted I verify every detail in every death with a call to the survivors.
Grunt I did. But I came away with entry level respect for accuracy and fact-checks, missing even in some practiced journalists.
My experience also was directional, like the IU coed’s.
Sure am glad I didn’t go into chemical engineering, though.