Laboring in Journalism’s Crowded, Precarious Entryway: Perceptions of Journalism Interns

Abstract

The both glamourous and precarious figure of the intern has become iconic in popular culture over the past 15 years. However, little academic research has explored interns and internships. Even fewer studies have examined internships as a form of labor in journalism (rather than as a component of journalism education), and none is based primarily on the voices of journalism interns themselves. To help fill this gap, this study explores how aspiring news workers today experience and respond to internship labor. The findings show that journalism interns face long, unpredictable work hours, rely on family support and side jobs to “afford” internships and use private resources to support their news production during internships. Their experiences often include a lack of mentorship and training, regardless of whether the internship is pursued as part of a journalism curriculum or independently. It is argued that concepts by critical communication scholars such as hope labor and aspirational labor—rather than the community of practice approach often used in research on journalism education—capture the work experiences of journalism interns in this study. Finally, a modification of the recently developed space of journalistic work model is proposed to account for interns’ growing importance to as well as precarious position in contemporary news production.