Twitter dunks on concept of unpaid internships

In case anybody wasn't on Twitter today, NFL Network's Jane Slater sparked an uproar when she touted the benefits of an unpaid internship.



Naturally, this did not go over well on Twitter. And she has been dunked on. Mercilessly. To the point "unpaid" is trending in the US.

 

It's no secret that the only people who can "grind" it out for the first 2-3 years of their career are the only ones who(se parents) can afford to make a poverty wage in their early 20s. Someone like Jane Slater should bring some more awareness to that reality, not look for Twitter points talking about how hard they think they had to grind.

 

Do readers give a shit if the person theyre following for local team free agency or line charts did or didnt intern or how much it did or didnt pay?

“dunking” on some reporter from nfl network you’ve never heard of or met.... for what?

 

The Twitter overreaction to this, like every Twitter pile-on, was utterly ludicrous.

 

It’s embarrassing to insinuate “if you want it bad enough you’ll ‘grind’ and work for free. Can’t work for free? Must not want it enough.” Especially hours after she saw pushback to her initial tweet. This was what she came up with after stopping to think... So dunk away, I say.

Especially considering she comes from money and didn’t have any worries about going a year or two without a paycheck, or with an insufficient one. (Full disclosure, I didn’t grow up rich, but definitely wouldn’t have made it anywhere in the biz without my parents’ help.)

But, she’s not the one who year in and year out decides to offer unpaid internships. The commenters are really angry about an industry that takes advantage of them and selects winners from upper class contenders. She’s just the idiot who unwittingly put her face on that shitty, problematic practice without stopping to think about why people might be pushing back against her initial tweet.

 

That’s awesome that the pretty white girl from a wealthy family whose chili mogul grandfather paid for her college education was able to bootstrap her way into a gig. If the rich girl can take an unpaid internship, why can’t you?

 

My time as an intern was 25 years ago and was unpaid (but it was for high school credit). Are unpaid internships still a thing?

 

I've come around to the idea Skip Bayless has the right idea with Twitter. Follow no one, reply to no one, tweet your insanity and move on.

 

My company eliminated unpaid internships ten years ago after concluding they violated federal law.

 

The Twitter reaction was hysterical, but this conversation is so 2015.

A more pertinent discussion would be the morality/ethics of college admins and professional journos encouraging anyone to enter this industry in its current state....

 

I can’t think of anything less important right now than this story

 

Maybe ... but look at where Jane Slater is financially. Look at where Darren Rovell was when he urged people to consider working for free.

Unaware and tone-deaf much?