The (not so) great age of unpaid internships

All journalists of a certain age will have a good answer to the question “what’s the worst thing that happened to you during an internship?”

I left university in 2009, which was the post-recession peak for interning. Back then, it was totally normal for desperate young graduates to work for months on end in the media and get paid absolutely nothing, just so they could write “Work experience - The Times” on their CV (to be fair The Times only requested a month’s free labour off me, so was not the worst offender).

My first internship was on the fashion desk at The Telegraph, and lasted three months. The fashion director Hilary Alexander - who recently passed away - ruled with an iron fist. On my first day, I came the closest I ever have to wetting myself in adulthood when she screamed directly into me and another intern’s face, accusing us of opening her bank statements with the rest of the post (why were they being delivered to the office? Who knows.) I quickly learnt to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, which is basically the opposite of what you’re meant to do on work experience, but seemed like my only mode of survival. During the internship my tasks including collecting Hilary’s prescriptions, standing in the fashion cupboard like a silent human mannequin so she could test outfits on me (I was much skinnier then) and running round London Fashion Week venues to stand outside and wordlessly pass over Hilary’s tickets so she didn’t have to carry them.

The other people who worked on her team were actually lovely, but having seen them all reduced to tears on almost a weekly basis, I knew I’d last about five seconds as an actual staffer under this regime (during a job interview at Stylist I was once asked, rather tellingly, if I was the type of person who would go and cry in the toilets if I got told off. The answer is yes).

As well as The Times, I spent a month with the fashion team at the Daily Mail, all of whom were made redundant during my first week there. I was sharing a computer with another intern at the time (a surprisingly common experience) and recall ferociously staring at the screen trying not to intrude on all the crying and hugging around me. Fun.

I went to The Independent too, where they did actually let me write a few things, most memorably a compilation of the best futons (I discovered the newspaper page I’d proudly torn out and kept the other day. BLESS). There were some nice people there too, such as a lovely stylist called Gemma Hayward who I will always remember gratefully because she took me on lots of shoots and spoke to me like an actual human, instead of Workie Number Two.

While I was at The Independent, I had an interview for a work experience position at the Evening Standard, which was in the same building. It went so well that I clearly had the six-month, unpaid role in the bag, until I dared to ask whether maybe, perhaps, there might be a paid job at the end of it? I can still remember the incredulous look on the fashion editor’s face, and the tone in which she explained to me how rare and amazing this opportunity was. I did not get the internship.

Obviously, on some level I’m grateful that my year of interning eventually got me a job - it was cheaper than the alternative of forking out £10k plus London living costs for a journalism MA at City University, where I was offered a place I basically couldn’t afford. But honestly, it was also complete bullshit. I slogged away at various jobs every evening and weekend to afford to work for free during the day, and to make rent vaguely affordable I shared a sub-let double bed in Brixton with my cousin (I’m at least glad this has made it into her comedy bio). No wonder journalism is full of extremely rich people.

Luckily, the unpaid internship thing seems to have pretty much disappeared now. You might get the odd week’s work experience here and there, but most companies would never get away with previous levels of exploitation any more. Maybe it’s because Gen Z-ers simply wouldn’t put up with it when they can make a “content-creating” career out of TikTok instead? Good for them.