Stuff Journalists Like – #22 Interns

Few things irritate journalists more than coming into the newsroom
and being handed an assignment that is an obviously space-filler nobody
will pay attention to. It takes time away from reporting the big
stories, be it like the investigative series that makes the front page
every day for a week, or profiles so powerful and sad they make readers
weep into their morning bowl of Cheerios.

As fascinating as the grand opening of the town’s new Sam’s Club may
be, odds are this article won’t bring home the Pulitzer. Its byline is
doomed to be lost in a tiny corner somewhere inside the paper, atop a
gray block of text only slightly more exciting than the owner’s manual
to a Honda Accord. Every journalist on the planet thinks knows they are too talented to devote their time to such amateur material.

That’s why journalists like interns. Interns are essentially used as mops to wipe up the day’s dullest news, allowing the professional
paid journalists who get paid to focus on items that will wind up in
frames and earn them the name recognition they so crave. Interns also
allow journalists to pursue time worthy efforts such as griping about
the death of newspapers or to write personal blogs. Without interns,
covering the news would get in the way of these endeavors. The best
part about it all? Interns are always smiling at the end of the day,
happy just to have one more clip to add to their resume. Interns are
more than happy to work for free. They will brush off the fact that no
one knows their name and will just nod when an editor asks to cover an
assignment fit for a keyboard monkey. There’s no need to ever feel
sorry for them.

Maybe one or two rogue interns will begin to grumble about how dull
their shifts have become. A good journalist will always smirk at this,
offer some sort of anecdote explaining that everybody has to start
somewhere, then remind them the time for tonight’s city council meeting
has been pushed back an hour.
Their future career depends on it.

- George Plaven, the Intern (not pictured). Apparently that is a real-life intern at Seattle’s The Stranger.

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