FEATURES Work Experience at…Trinity
Mirror Group
“I did work experience at a local paper, but wasn’t based inside the office. Instead, they sent me out to cover local events, with the promise of lots of bylines in the newspaper. One day, I covered a disabled rights protest at the town hall. After standing for hours in the pouring rain, listening to speeches and taking quotes from disgruntled protesters, things took an exciting turn; we stormed the cabinet meeting and confronted the councillors. “That night I sent in my photographs and filed my copy to the news team, but heard nothing back. That Friday, my photograph and story (word for word) made the front page but instead of my name, the chief reporter was credited. I received no explanation. There’s no point putting it in my portfolio now; my photo didn’t even get a byline.”
#TheDevilPaysNada campaigners target
because I thought it was just someone being kind,” she recalls. “But she took me over to the kitchen and said that if I wanted to do well in journalism, I should offer the whole office tea every hour on the hour. She then took me through everyone’s tea preferences.” Another, working at Condé Nast, was often sent out to change the staff parking permits. “The editor’s PA would summon me from across the office, and send me down to the underground car park to change the ticket on the editor’s car.” Such stories are not uncommon when it comes to Condé Nast. Although the publishing house pays £10 a day expenses and each magazine is only officially allowed two interns at a time, one journalist who interned at Vogue House last summer said that most of the publications appear to flout the rules. “They have unpaid interns as well as the ones on expenses. When I was there, An internship at…News
International
“Without the jobs done by interns, the magazines would grind to a halt. After working at News International for some time I was told I would have to leave, as all intern positions were now to be filled by school and university students. This meant they didn’t have to pay their expenses. I thought this was disgustingly unfair. After three years at university I had expected to have more opportunities, not fewer. “I have written to HMRC and my local MP about this, and heard nothing from the MP. I was told by HMRC that my only option was to launch a case against the places at which I have interned – which would basically blacklist me from ever getting a job.”
52 / xcity-magazine.com
they had three or four interns just transcribing at any one time.” Even worse news for industry hopefuls: the fashion pack many major magazines now offer year-long placement schemes that pay in the region of £11,000 per year, despite the London Living Wage for an average 40-hour week working out at £16,446 per year. These internships, editors privately admit, have replaced junior reporter or ‘first step on the ladder’ jobs that previously cost magazines between £16,000 and £20,000 each year. But overworked and underpaid interns are starting to show signs of fighting back. In the last four months, high profile cases ‒ including a start-up politics blog, The Kernel, whose owner is facing a high court order of over £16,000 in unpaid wages ‒ have brought the young unemployed to national attention. In December 2012, a work experience placement at the New Statesman was auctioned off for £1,000, provoking outcry from media watchdogs and intern rights campaigners, while football site Goal.com was investigated for using 30 unpaid interns to file match reports. In February 2013, internship activists used the popular hashtag #TheDevilPaysNada – a play on the title of the book (and film) The Devil Wears Prada, which satirises the work of fashion magazine editorial assistants ‒ to target the fashion industry for its abuse of intern labour at London Fashion Week. Subsequently, a bill on the issue was scheduled to be read in the House of Commons on 1 March.
In spite of this apparent backlash, there are few signs of improvement. The bill never made it to a hearing, and with a workforce of young people desperate for experience, hard-pressed companies see little point in changing their ways. Part of the problem is the lack of clarity around the difference between work experience and internships. Loraine Davies, director of the Periodicals Training Council, is concerned employers are not aware of this distinction. “Work experience should be a maximum of four weeks,” she says. “An intern is an employee on a fixed term contract.” But drawing up clear definitions has been far from simple. “We have to look at the tax laws to see what defines an
“Internships are a plague on our profession that has seeped in from American journalism”
‘employee’, and work back from there,” explains Davies, adding that some employers are breaking the law without realising, thereby risking heavy fines from the taxman. Perhaps as a result, some publications like the New Statesman have stopped running internships altogether and now only run two-week placements. Conscious that the publication can only pay travel expenses within London, deputy editor Helen Lewis explains the reasons behind the two-week limit. “You can sleep on someone’s sofa for two weeks,” she says, “but six weeks is pushing it.” But that still means finding a sofa in the capital. Libby Page comes from a small town outside of London, but did