HPRgument Blog — July 5, 2010 11:48 am

The Times’ Silly Article on “Elusive” Internships

By Sam Barr

In a couple of blog posts this spring, I commented favorably on the Obama Labor Department’s decision to crack down on employers who abuse their college-age interns—essentially using them as replacements for regular employees, minus the pay. Far from saying “you can’t have unpaid interns, that it’s exploitation,” as John Stossel put it, the regulations simply require that internships serve their original intended function, which is to provide training and experience in a particular field.

That is, if an unpaid internship is more like an apprenticeship than a job that happens to be unpaid, then it’s okay. But if you’re assigned to the facilities department to “wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu,” as one aspiring animator profiled by the New York Times in April had been, that’s not okay. That’s taking a job away from a janitor, that’s mistreating an intern who thought she was going to learn something, that’s exploiting the fact that most interns won’t complain about doing grunt work because they’re so desperate to have seemingly impressive experiences on their résumés.

This weekend, the Times followed up on this subject, announcing that “Students Chafe Under Internship Guidelines” and that summer internships had become “elusive.”

It was a very silly article.

The thesis: “many students have had a tougher time than they anticipated in landing résumé-enhancing experience this summer.”

The proof: ehh… not so much.

Let’s check out each of these “tales of frustration,” as the Times describes them. But first, let’s note that the thesis, even if true, wouldn’t prove a causal relationship between the Labor Department’s regulations and the experiences of these students. In any case, on to the anecdotes:

1. A “junior at Penn State had his paid corporate internship offer revoked during the last week of classes this spring.”

— A sad story indeed. Oh, wait, we find out later that he found “a six-week paid position at another firm.” And this must have been in late spring, by which point most spots are filled up. Still, with all that working against him, in the midst of this supposed internship drought, he found an internship, and a paid one at that.

2. “A journalism student in Washington had to walk away from three internship opportunities because she wouldn’t receive academic credit.”

—That’s unfortunate, though it would seem to be the fault of her stingy school, not regulation-fearing employers. What’s more, “She ended up finding a part-time paid internship, but it’s not in journalism; it’s a post at the federal Food and Drug Administration.” The way this punchline is set up, the author clearly wants us to pity the student. Alas, somehow an article that set out to prove that employers wouldn’t even offer unpaid internships is instead proving that paid internships abound.

3. “Emily Lennox, a 25-year-old M.B.A. candidate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said the academic credit requirement hadn’t arisen last summer when she took an unpaid internship at a venture capital firm, a position she said provided a valuable “quick immersion” into the business world. “This year it was more difficult,” she said. She finally found two part-time unpaid internships, though she said she has since quit one out of dissatisfaction. But, she added, she is learning a lot in the other — a 15-hour-a-week stint at a start-up retail firm.”

— First, contrary to the author’s implication, the unpaid venture capital internship, if it were truly so “valuable,” would probably not alarm the Labor Department. Second, this woman found not one but two internships. One of them happened to be lousy, so she quit. Good for her. But if that internship really was so lousy, why would we bemoan its possible disappearance? And wouldn’t we want to require this employer to actually teach its interns something?

4. “Sarah Green, a 20-year-old art history major at Emory University, landed a prestigious internship last summer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year she hoped to return to the New York art world. She applied to every auction house and museum she could find for both paid and unpaid spots. Every place turned her down, with some explaining they’d cut back on the number of interns they now hire. The experience may have been a career-changer for Ms. Green. “I took this as a sign that I was not meant to work in the fine arts,” she said. Instead she enrolled in summer courses in graphic design and advertising and has now decided to apply to a graduate program in art direction for advertising.”

— How resourceful of her. A sob story this is not. But it comes pretty close to supporting the author’s thesis: “some” employers explained that they’d “cut back.” Of course, that could just be a line they feed to disappointed applicants. Anyway, it sounds like Sarah had some rotten luck, but the Times could have just as easily interviewed the people who got the internships she applied for. Without any statistical evidence that the number of internships offered this year is lower than in previous years, there’s no reason to cherry-pick her story over anyone else’s.

5. “Kathryn Ciano, a law student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who aspires to become a legal journalist, worked through a group called the Institute for Humane Studies, which helped place her in an unpaid internship at Fox Business News in New York and awarded her a $3,200 stipend. But Fox still required her to obtain a letter showing she was receiving academic credit for the work. Her law school wouldn’t grant credit for a journalism internship, however. So she found a community college in Los Angeles that would award her credit and furnish the required letter for $200 — much less than she would have had to pay George Mason.

Ms. Ciano’s internship sounds like the type of post the new rules might call into question — 40 to 50 hours a week working on the development of a new show. But Ms. Ciano said the hands-on experience has been terrific. “It’s really wonderful,” she said. “They’re really nurturing, great mentors.””

— Again, if the internship is really so “wonderful” and “nurturing,” then no, it would not be called into question by the Labor Department’s rules. The point of the regulations is to make sure that unpaid internships are “hands-on” and “terrific.” The author of this article should have gone back and read the Times’ April piece: packaging and shipping apparel samples, making coffee and sweeping bathrooms, photocopying and filing—now those actually sound like the type of internships the new rules might call into question.

So, we have five detailed anecdotes, none of which is particularly compelling or tear-jerking, several of which prove the opposite of what they were intended to prove. I’m usually not a fan of anecdote-based newspaper articles, especially when there’s absolutely no statistical evidence backing up the selection of certain anecdotes over others. But this article isn’t just of a bad type; it’s a terrible execution of a bad type.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

Obama Mad Libs
Biden and Gibbs Mad Libs
Social Studies Walkout: Video
Breaking Down The Super Committee
Tags:
Author: Sam Barr '11, a government concentrator, was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Political Review in 2010.
  • Anon

    perhaps as a function of its unbearable pretentiousness, this post misses the significance of the Times’ at-least-decent article: that companies are cutting back on internships.

    maybe from your narrow perspective as a harvard student, you fail to realize that there are a vast quantity of recent college graduates who literally cannot find any opportunities, paid or unpaid. i doubt it’s simply “rotten luck.”

    yes, the nyt hasn’t done a comprehensive statistical analysis — but neither have you.

    even some of your accusations of “silliness” are rather stupid themselves: for example, “though it would seem to be the fault of her stingy school, not regulation-fearing employer” is far more arbitrary an attribution than those made by the nyt, as the person in question wouldn’t need credit if it weren’t for the regulations — and many schools have good reason not to give credit for internships)

    while the impact of the regulations restricting unpaid internships is likely dwarfed by the recession, the nyt does explain that “several” businesses are cutting back on internships they offer because they cannot afford to pay interns.

    yes, businesses should not be able to exploit interns for menial labor. but it’s also true that there are meaningful unpaid opportunities that might not fit into labor department regulations. and they are probably preferable to none at all.

  • Sam Barr

    Anonymous,

    It may well be true that internships are hard to find, but the burden was on the Times to prove, A. that this is in part due to the Labor Department regulations, and not just to the bad economy, and B. that this is true at all.

    The Times didn’t even attempt to do A. It tried to do B., and if it had succeeded, we might have forgiven the questionable assumption that just because internships are hard to find, the Labor Department’s rather trivial requirements are to blame for that fact.

    It was not my burden to do a comprehensive statistical analysis. I don’t have the resources of a major metropolitan newspaper. The Times made a claim without evidence, and I called it out for lacking evidence. It’s not on me to produce evidence proving the opposite of what was initially claimed.

    As for your statement that “the person in question wouldn’t need [academic] credit [for her internship] if it weren’t for the regulations,” I can only say: neither of us knows for sure, but your affirmative statement has absolutely no backing. The Times article says, “all three employers insisted she obtain credit from her university.” It goes on to say that her university sets a maximum number of credits students may receive and charges money for the credits themselves. If the university or employers were hemmed in by federal regulations, wouldn’t the Times have said so? It would have supported the article’s argument brilliantly. So, either there are no such federal regulations regarding academic credit, or the author of this article did a lousy job by failing to find out that there are. And yet you say this is an “at-least-decent” article?

    For what it’s worth, the Labor Department’s stricter enforcement of its regulations was announced this year, and I recall seeing the requirement that interns get academic credit from their schools before that.

    Like you did, I picked up on the Times’ statement that a certain number of business claim to be cutting back on interns. Like I said in my post, this is the strongest piece of evidence the Times has, and yet it’s still remarkably weak. As you yourself point out, these companies might be offering fewer internships because of the recession. And, as I pointed out initially, this sort of anecdotal evidence is extremely suspect without some sort of justification for its use, which would be provided, say, by evidence showing that the number of internships offered this year is smaller than last year. Otherwise, what makes one anecdotes more compelling than the other?

    Is this a little legalistic? Sure it is. I don’t deny that a lot of college grads can’t find opportunities, as you say. But the Times article was after a more specific claim, and it failed to support it.

    Finally, you say, “but it’s also true that there are meaningful unpaid opportunities that might not fit into labor department regulations.” I guess I just wonder how you know that. This is the thing about blogging: it’s easy to tear other people down, show that they’re not proving what they need to prove, but it’s hard to prove things affirmatively unless you have, say, a team of investigative reporters or (god forbid!) interns to help you out. The Times has those things, so people have a right to be critical when, instead of evidence, it produces a handful of anecdotes, several of which prove the opposite of what was intended. (I’m referring, of course, to the fact that the interns with these “tales of frustration” are all profitably employed this summer, either at internships, some paid, or at other worthy endeavors.)

    Sam

    Of course it could still be true that the labor regulations are striking at internships that are unpaid but still “preferable to none at all.” You don’t know, and I don’t know, and we both know the Times doesn’t know. But given that the regulations treat training and experience as sufficient compensation, and do not actually bar unpaid internships, and given that this all comes down to what employers the Labor Department thinks flagrant enough to be worth the trouble of going after, I think that the kind of internships you’re worried about are probably safe.

  • Anon Mouse

    Sam,

    They do fulfill their (a) subpoint burden — the economy, if anything, has gotten better since 2009 (it certainly hasn’t gotten any worse, and most people I talk to who are looking for jobs / have recently found them seem to think that it’s opening up a bit). The only other major factor (no one so far has discussed any other alternate causalities) that could impact internship openings is the shift in regulation — so if they do a decent job illustrating (b) then it follows that (a) is also true.

    And I think they do end up doing a decent job proving (b) — and this is where we differ.

    The biggest issue is that your burden of proof is absurd in the context of a daily newspaper — the job of a newspaper is not that of an academic or legal journal; demanding that every article that makes an argument must be backed with a comprehensive statistical analysis would mean the end of the daily periodical. Elucidating possible trends with anecdotal evidence to provoke further debate — as newspapers intend to do — is more than enough, especially when dealing with an issue that’s not very easily measured (many internships are not recorded and dispute over what/how much constitutes a “summer internship” would make the difficult to quantify).

    This means that while the NYT article isn’t fantastic, it’s certainly not “silly,” and dismissing it so completely is mistaken.

    Further, being “legalistic” would mean you must hold the NYT to their own standard — they’re not claiming anything more than some anecdotal evidence: the title is “students chafe under guidelines” — they prove that a plural number of students have — and it’s worth re-examining their thesis:
    “Between the sputtering economy and updated federal guidelines governing the employment of unpaid interns, many students have had a tougher time than they anticipated in landing résumé-enhancing experience this summer.”
    It’s an extraordinarly modest claim, one that can be fully supported by anecdotes.

    So, to the examples once again, each one of which proves a demonstrable change in internship accessibility between this year and last year:

    (1) A junior at Penn state loses a summer-long corporate internship for a “six-week” position — yes, he’s not entirely pitiable, but that’s also a little less than a third of the summer, meaning he’s functionally lost two-thirds of his internship.

    In addition, it’s clearly described as an example of an internship that literally disappeared because a company which thought it could offer additional internships realized it couldn’t (“Companies were cutting back on the number”). Either the economy suddenly dipped — of course, a legitimate possibility — or regulations kicked it. Not something to scoff at, and certainly not something that disproves their point.

    (2) You contend that “[i]f the university or employers were hemmed in by federal regulations, wouldn’t the Times have said so?”

    Not necessarily, particularly since it’s the obvious implication: employers fear the regulations, and they know they’re protected against them if the school gives the student credit (since they’re objectively “educational”), so it makes absolute sense that they’d raise their standards.

    She had to walk away from three different internships because employers required students get academic credit — and while it’s not 100% clear that these are new requirements, it’s very reasonable to assume that they are, since it makes little since why an employer would condition an internship on someone getting academic credit

    (3) The implication is not that the “unpaid capital internship” has disappeared, rather just that it was harder for Emily the MBA candidate to find an internship. This time, the one she didn’t quit out of dissatisfaction is part-time — again, speaking to the scarcity of full-time, quality internships.

    The more inaccurate implication is the one made in your statement to the effect of “we shouldn’t bemoan the disappearance of the ‘lousy’ internship.” The implication is that its disappearance is prompted by regulation — and it’s clear in the article that this is not the case. On the contrary, the internship was probably legal under the guidelines because it was offered this summer.

    (4) Sarah, whose inability to find an art history internship this year — while she found one the year previosuly — forces her to change her career. As an interrogator with such high standards, I shouldn’t have to explain that dismissing this with the incredible speculation “of course, that could just be a line they feed to disappointed applicants” and saying hers is just “rotten luck” is clearly insufficient.

    You argue that there’s “no reason to cherry-pick her story over anyone else’s” — but it’s only “cherrypicking” if the nyt is selectively avoiding stories. While it might not be anyone’s “burden” to perform comprehensive statistical analysis, in this instance it’s yours to prove that the NYT’s act is “cherrypicking” rather than simply supporting their position evidence, and the way you do it is by finding other stories of people who have found wonderful internships this year that were unavailable last year or at least unaffected by regulation.

    The difficulty, of course, is that there will be those stories — but they still won’t disprove the NYT’s argument, since it’s simply that some–not all–internships are disappearing. The NYT isn’t even claiming that regulations haven’t done any good — that they have been generally nice is not at all incompatible with the fact that some students dislike them. You’d be hard-pressed to find enough anecdotes to swamp all of the NYT’s.

    (5) is same as (2)

    So these examples, in addition to some additional evidence, like their quotation from Dave Phillipson, the organizer of an entrepreneur network who intended an internship program but abandoned it because of the ruling, seem sufficient to prove the NYT’s modest point.

    One last thought — have you considered that the reason why some of the anecdotes don’t completely support the NYT’s argument (since most of those interviewed end up getting other internships) is actually a reason why they’ve come closer to approximating the truth? That the anecdotes are all from people who ended up getting their second choices proves that these are hard-working individuals who sincerely care about finding internships. And those are probably the best ones to cite in support of this sort of argument.

    I also have a feeling that you won’t lose sleep over stories about someone who doesn’t get an internship, no matter how unfortunate their condition. I say this because you either have an ideological conviction against the multitude of unpaid internships (one which I share — I think that in general they’re demeaning), or you’re a bit bitter because at some point, you didn’t get one.

    I don’t want to speculate on your rationale for writing this post, especially since personally I agree that unpaid internships should be regulated and the system that supports them should be substantially revised.

    My point is simply that you cannot claim that the NYT is wrong because they’ve failed to prove their argument. They’re wrong because you want them to be wrong — and that’s an entirely different thing altogether.

  • Sam Barr

    I take issue with a lot of your responses, but none more so than your very weak defense of the Times as a “daily newspaper” that cannot afford to undertake any more rigorous sort of analysis than the resort to anecdotes.

    If high burdens of proof spelled the end of the daily newspaper, the Times would have been out of business years ago. You think the reporters who broke the warrantless wiretapping story a few years back couldn’t have produced more articles if they’d focused on something else? Of course they could have, but they focused on warrantless wiretapping because it was a big story. Now, I don’t think this internship business is a big story, but in order to justify the implication, if not the outright claim of the article to the effect that internships have dwindled because of the regulations, they need a lot more than anecdotes. Why? Because they could have found students who had “a tougher time than they anticipated” finding internships last year or the year before, or any other year for that matter.

    This sort of weakness will be present in any anecdote-based article, and, as I imply in the last sentence of my original post, this might be a bad type of article generally speaking, but it is susceptible to good execution. This particular article failed to live up to that standard, because its anecdotes were so terrible.

    1. A six-week internship is not unusually short. The IOP Director’s Internships last from 8 to 10 weeks. You don’t know that his initial internship was 18 weeks long (which is longer than most summers) so it’s just ridiculous to say he lost two-thirds of it.

    Yes, the initial internship was canceled, and that’s a good data point for the author’s case. But the article set out to tell “tales of frustration” and to prove that internships are “elusive.” It would have been infinitely more effective if the student had been forced, say, to take a job flipping burgers, or no job at all. My point is just that the effectiveness of the anecdote is undermined by some details of the anecdote itself. Hence, I say that while I generally disapprove of anecdote-filled news stories, this one is particularly bad because its anecdotes aren’t even that persuasive. Who is this other company that has paid internship spots available in late spring? Why aren’t they feeling the burn from the regulations?

    2. This is just tremendously weak. The Times doesn’t have the luxury of simply implying what they want to prove. They have to state it outright if it’s true, or leave it unsaid and unimplied if it’s false. You have no evidence that “employers fear the regulations,” and it’s hard to see why they would when the regulations give them a clear way of having unpaid interns while remaining above board.

    Here, to bring some actual facts into this debate, why don’t you read the Labor Department fact sheet on these regulations? http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

    They show that, while academic credit is helpful in establishing that an internship is primarily educational, it is not required. So, yes, these companies may have required academic credit as a way of getting further credence with the Labor Department. But it say so innocently that you can’t imagine why internships would demand academic credit is ridiculous. These rules were announced in April. When I was searching for internships last winter and the two winters before that, I often encountered the stipulation that unpaid interns receive academic credit.

    Furthermore, in the specific case of this student, the real reason she couldn’t do these internships is because her school set a maximum on the number of credits available for internships and because it charges for those credits. That school is not the subject of these regulations, so again, this anecdote really doesn’t work.

    3. My point with this one is that Emily the MBA would have had a perfectly satisfactory internship experience this summer if both part-time internships had been fruitful. Only one was. But we can’t blame the regulations for the lousiness of the first internship. Who knows why it was lousy? But it’s a mere happenstance that Emily had a great experience last summer, and a bad one this summer. I for one am much happier with my internship this summer than the one I had last summer.

    Furthermore, my point was that, if this lousy internship were to disappear because of the regulations, we would have no cause to gnash our teeth, because it was lousy anyway. So all this anecdote shows is that lousy internships are out there, and one student found one of them. How does that advance the Times’ narrative in the least?

    4. I admitted from the start that Sarah’s story was the most effective, and I apologize for offending your delicate sensibilities with what was clearly sarcasm and not a serious argument. Still, again, the story does not really resonate as a tale of frustration because it has such a happy ending: Sarah found something else to do, and there’s no indication she’s unsatisfied with it. Again, if she were just staying home all day or flipping burgers or something, that would be a compelling anecdote. My point was that these anecdotes are far short of compelling.

    Of course the Times is selectively avoiding stories. That’s what it means to have anecdotes! Yes, I could come back with all sorts of stories about people having great internships this summer, but since we both know those stories are out there, I won’t bother.

    I think your last couple of paragraphs are extremely snotty and stupid, to be quite blunt. I either have an ideological conviction which you share, or I’m bitter? Why do you even mention the second possibility, except to suggest that it’s true?

    You don’t want to speculate on my rationale for writing this post, but you believe that I want the Times to be wrong? Why would I want that? Why would anyone?

    I mean, I don’t want to speculate on your rationale for writing this comment, but maybe you did so just because you’re bored at your summer internship and want to be snotty on the Internet with the protection of anonymity. I mean, I’m not saying that’s the case or anything.

  • Anonymous

    I apologize if I’ve offended you with my snottiness, stupidity, etc — you are spot on, I am extremely bored.

    Before I answer what you’ve written, it’s important to realize that you did not answer the two most important arguments I made:

    1. The NYT’s thesis is modest: to prove that some students dislike the new guidelines and that the economy/regulations have meant that “many students have had a tougher time than they anticipated in landing résumé-enhancing experience.” They are honest about what they’re trying to argue and they present a generally even-handed assessment of the events.

    2. That none of the stories end in death or the reader’s collapse into uncontrollable outbursts of tears is a good thing. That these students end up with other, less beneficial internships — all of which were worse than their previous summer — proves (a) that these students are genuinely trying hard to find internships, so they’re a good representative sample and (b) that last summer was better.

    This is especially relevant considering that people generally should have better internships the following year (like you), since they have more experience and are more qualified. The NYT could have sufficiently proved their point by simply showing that some people have not advanced in the internship market as they hoped.

    -

    The point I made about standards, of course, was not that newspapers shouldn’t do good reporting, but rather that not every single article can be held to the standard of an article published in a legal journal (monthly/biweekly/even some weekly magazines, for instance, offer lengthier, in-depth examinations. This specific article neither does so nor claims to do so — it’s “not a big story” as you say) .

    I’m not sure how many more anecdotes is “a lot more,” so I can’t really argue with you other than to say that that for their 1400 word article they speak with:

    1 employment attorney
    5 affected employers (ESPN, CEO Space, Atlantic Media, Stossel of Fox,
    5 students (Penn State, Loyola MBA, Emory, American U in Washington, George Mason)

    In addition, they cite a survey by the National Assoc. of Colleges and Employers finding an increase in students holding internships and an auction where unpaid internships went for tens of thousands of dollars, two convincing bits of evidence that seem to illustrate a possible uptick in the competition for internships.

    1. The difference can be two to four weeks, that’s still (for the IOP) between $800-$1600.
    2. It is a daily newspaper with word limits, and reading the piece makes it very clear that employers are chafing under regulations:

    “The guidelines, from the Labor Department, have left employers scrambling to bulletproof their internship programs, said Camille Olson, a management-side employment attorney, who represents companies who have been dealing with this issue”

    I’m glad you directed us to the Dept of Labor’s criteria — one of which stipulates that interns “performing productive work” require compensation. (More specifically, “Criteria 4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded”)

    While I’m sure that this can’t be as bad as it sounds, it appears as if any interns found doing something actually useful (which is the best way for an internship to be worthwhile; you can only watch other people work for so long before it becomes uninteresting) they must be compensated.

    It’s not hard to leap to the conclusion that more employers are requiring credit, since it protects them from regulation.

    Further, these employers aren’t just advising credit — they outright refuse qualified candidates because they can’t get credit, no matter the reason. This is bad business practice — it makes very little sense for an employer to condition their internship on something so tangential unless there are regulations (or, of course, they don’t trust their intern to do any real work unless they need to show up to get class credit).

    3. It did not disappear because of regulations.

    4. I am quite delicate, and rather bitter that many of my friends were unable to find internships, which is why I took offense to your use of “rotten luck.” I am glad to know that it was tongue-in-cheek.

custom writing