This spring, undergraduate coder and incoming Facebook intern Aran Khanna published a problem with Facebook Messenger, the most popular app on the entire iTunes Store: it was transmitting your location to everyone and you probably had no idea. Instead of rewarding his vigilance, Facebook fired him.
This week, veteran journalist Nate Thayer posted to his personal blog an email exchange he'd recently had with an editor from the Atlantic. The editor was asking Thayer to take something he'd already written and adapt a shorter version for use on the Atlantic's website, but there was a catch: The editor wanted Thayer to do it for free. "I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years," Thayer wrote, "and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to [for-profit] media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children."
Unpaid internships are controversial. "Workplace experience, invaluable connections, blah blah," say the employers. "You fired your lowest-wage workers and now you have us doing their menial jobs which have nothing to do with 'education,'" say the actual interns. All sides should be able to agree on this: unpaid internships—essentially part time jobs that pay nothing—are an incredible hardship for students without money, thereby tilting the playing field wildly in favor of students with money (as if they needed any more help).
Gawker is taking on a gaggle of paid fall interns, beginning in September. If you are: interested in blogging and journalism, New York-based, familiar with Gawker's tone and content, a good writer, a quick learner, and overall an excellent human specimen, this is the internship for you.
People lose jobs all the time by writing dumb stuff on Twitter. But Newton's Third Law of Internet Dynamics means people also get jobs by writing dumb stuff on Twitter. Well, in this case it's internships: the New York Times recounts how the ad agency Campbell Mithun hired six summer interns via a Twitter competition, "The Lucky 13," wherein they had to come up with 13 tweets making their case.
First, there were paid internships. Those were okay. Then, there were unpaid internships. Those were just slightly better than nothing. Now, there are internships you pay for, which won't even get you a high-paying job. Those are a scam.
Journalism training in Korea has all the hallmarks of a good reality show: Cub reporters must drink themselves silly, stay awake around the clock, sleep together, and stab one another in the back. It makes Columbia look like Coney Island.
• It looks like it's over for Paris Hilton and boyfriend Doug Reinhardt. Please excuse us while we go get a big box of tissues; we really weren't mentally prepared for news this upsetting this morning. [People, Sun]
• A couple of weeks ago, it was Gwynnie Paltrow who was getting blamed for setting A-Rod up with Kate Hudson. Now real estate "superagent" Adam Modlin is taking credit for brokering the transaction. Go figure. [NYDN]
• Maybe Kanye West and Amber Rose didn't break up, after all. Or maybe they did break up, but they're spending a lot of time together anyway? It's a mystery, really. [P6]
• Coco Rocha is not going to be an intern at Vogue this summer. She's just spending a lot of time there so she can "learn more about the business." [WWD]
The ongoing collapse of the American economy means middle-class college grads must behave like coddled aristocratic twits and secure internships through their parents' largesse.
