In February, the Toronto Star announced it will be putting its paid internships on an indefinite hiatus, while allowing current interns to complete their paid contracts. According to the Star, this is because they no longer can afford to pay full-time interns, given the current decline in revenue from advertisements.
In my opinion, the goal of many students is to gain experience before thinking about getting paid. At the end of the day, experience is what most hiring managers ask for, not whether it was a paid position or not.
The market for advertising is like a pendulum and it swings both directions. It’s not the fault of the Toronto Star that revenue from this income is decreasing, but they should think about ways in which to accommodate students striving to gain experience, without a major termination of the internship programs.
Instead, the Toronto Star should consider offering unpaid internships for those students whose main goal is gaining experience, because experience can ultimately lead to highly paid jobs. The requirements on any job application is the field and number of years of experience, not the salary received. I am quite sure that internships, even if they are unpaid, with a prominent news agency such as the Toronto Star, will add value to any resumé.
I understand how unpaid internships might be hard for many students—myself included—given we have to pay rent and other expenses. But, if I were in charge of hiring someone, I would always consider those resumés that denote the applicants’ passion for what they are doing. What greater proof of passion is there than when one decides to not take money for the sake of improving their journalistic skills?
For example, look at internships with the CBC. Interning with them is unpaid. Although it is written on their website that interns might get employed after the internship period, it is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the experience one will get after finishing the six-month-long internship period.
At the same time, interning is a requirement for graduation at most journalism schools in Canada. The complete termination of these programs ultimately means that students will miss out on the chance to gain experience while still in school.
It is no fault of the students that news organizations are running out of money to hire them as paid interns. But to some universities, their journalism programs are ranked highly worldwide because of the successes their students achieve upon graduation. This success can definitely be correlated to requiring the completion of journalism internships, both unpaid and paid.
To these universities, removing the internship requirement from the curriculum will eventually mean that students will no longer be able to compete in the journalism arena, and the university will lose its status of being a world-renowned journalism.
I believe the Toronto Star and other news organizations that are considering terminating their internship programs should introduce both paid and unpaid streams. Most accepted applicants would take part in the unpaid program. This is because the Toronto Star will likely keep the paid program—if they do take it off hiatus—to a limited amount of students due to their financial situation.
This means that students might work with the media organization they interned with based on the premise that some employ their interns upon graduation. Others will be employed by companies and organizations that will value the experience and work applicants dedicated to their unpaid internships.
Students must not be deprived of the chance to do an internship and of having the opportunity to gain experience which will ultimately, make them top candidates for any job. Students should have the chance to gain experience when there is room for it, whether it be paid or not.
