Comments on: Intern Nation

By: karen conner

karen conner — Mon, 10 May 2010 19:00:35 +0000

Judith – you were way ahead of Steven Greenhouse and his piece in the NYTimes on this issue. Wanted you to see a related paper published by the Economic Policy Institute recently on this topic:
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/pm160/

By: luke

luke — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:05:27 +0000

Dear Judith, thank you so much for writing this – especially on gratitude. I live in Italy, which has a very similar work situation to the one you describe. I have been working for some years in a magazine – doing everything from writing to database building, and as much as I hate not having any kind of contract, being (at best) underpaid and being in an unfriendly environment, I just couldn’t help feeling gratitude for my employers: I began as an unskilled trainee, and ended up as a semi-skilled… trainee. I used to feel I owed them something. I realized quite late that whatever value there is in what I’ve learned and done it is first of all MY work, MY effort. MY value.

By: Robin Kemp

Robin Kemp — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:36:34 +0000

Judith, thanks so much for this. I’ve been saying it over and over for 15 years, during which I saw a respectable freelance writing income dwindle to zero. At the same time, several outlets I’ve written for have been gobbled up by mega-corporations. Those mega-corporations, in turn, specialize in reselling per-hit database subscriptions to the content we writers research and create. (Funny how that information is essentially “worthless” until it gets into said corporate database.) I started writing for a living in 1986. I have two advanced degrees in writing and am nearly done with a third. I have network news experience. When “editors” today suggest I do work for clips, “to get your name out there,” or for a great line on my vita, I run screaming in the other direction.