Indeed. It is a shame. Back in the past, even seven-year apprentices were paid. Perhaps not enough to live on but the basic work-for-hire ethic was there, albeit hanging on by its fingertips. Even in feudal times.
At one point, we had a betting book on the go at CN. We'd size up the latest intake of interns and editorial assistants - who were interns with grander titles - and take bets on which ones would crumble quickly, which ones would harden into nasty future spinsters and which ones might succeed with their niceness intact. I am glad to report that a few met the third criterion.
In IPC in London, one young fellow turned up to do one of those work experience gigs on a release from university. After a week of stepping and fetching for the editors, he buttonholed the E-i-C of the magazine in question and told him that he was fine with fetching coffee, latin marching powder and the dry-cleaning but was the man able to teach him anything about magazines?
Result? No more slavery. He was instantly included in the trips to the pub, asked to write stuff and treated with respect.
If you have "I am your doormat" written on your face when you turn up to do an internship, you will be treated like a doormat. When the same young man called me a year later saying that he was doing a year release in Paris but didn't want to spend it teaching French kids English, I was happy to place him. He worked for Marion de Beaupré for a time before joining Numéro as Deputy Features Editor under Stephen Todd. He later became Features Editor.
And he deserved it because he was confident and good as opposed to brash and talentless.
He never went back to university after a very drunken night in a dark hole somewhere during which we impressed on him that the degree for which he was reading might qualify him to apply for the jobs he had already done in that year out. And to be rejected out of hand as college-trained deadweight.
If you stand up for yourself and are shown the door for it, believe me when I say that your superiors there never meant you well to begin with and that you were going to waste even more time by staying around. It's like the old ploy of having one meeting with a client to talk about a project andy then turning up for the next meeting and asking which one has the chequebook. No chequebook, no commission in writing or by email? Stand up and head for the door.
Hope some of this makes sense to some of you.
