Bleacher Report - What do you make of this?

Yep. At an unpaid internship in a PR agency, you'll be getting to know the people you want to work for.

 

IllMill, if you feel like this is at least worth considering, it's worth at least talking to Yanarello. Our career paths have crossed and my experience with him is that he is a straight shooter. Also used to be at least a lurker around here. I'm not sure if that is still the case.

That said, this just doesn't sound like an internship that is going to do much for you in the long run.

 

unpaid internship...no-brainer...you'll make connections and be much more appealing as a hire 6 months from now than a couch potato blogging for peanuts.

 

Hearing about this, it scares me to think people working for these sites really think they can transition into print journalism. Next time we hire (about the same time the polar icecaps melt, of course), should this raise alarms if I see it on a resume?

 

Yes. It should raise alarms that quantity matters over quality. It does not.

 

Tell that to every blogger ever. I don't see how this should raise any more alarms than a kid who starts his own blog and writes for that. At least this pays. From experience, some kids just can't afford to take an unpaid internship.

 

10-15 stories a day? Yeah, that will be some quality writing.

 

$1,000 a month and it takes up all of your time?

You'd be better off working at Starbucks & writing your own blog. At least with your own blog, you can control the content -- the quantity & the quality.

If you're putting up 10-15 stories a day, none will likely be any good or catch anyone's interest.

 

Yeah, count every brief I crank out on small school basketball andI think I can hit that ...

 

Do what feel will benefit you in the long run. If you want a little bit of exposure, then go for it. Bleacher Report does have a group of high-profile partners through which they syndicate content, but I have yet to see any benefits from that.

I served as an editing intern for B/R for a three-month period and didn't receive squat. So, from that standpoint, a grand a month doesn't sound all that bad.

However, I'd have to side with a majority of the responses on here. You'd likely be better off serving as an unpaid intern at your local paper or doing some freelance work, however sporadic it may be. At least that would be some real-world experience.

I am more than familiar with the content that is often posted on B/R, and by the look of it, I would be willing to go out on a limb and say they are already paying someone to do this job. There's a lot of mindless junk floating around on that site, almost as if some poor schmuck is being forced to pump out 10-15 hurried articles per day. And that's only a small portion of it. It seems that more than half of the articles posted to B/R are written by some superfan with a PC and an opinion, which is often expressed with misspellings and third-grade-level grammar. But such is this thing we call citizen journalism.

If you'd enjoy gluing yourself to the AP wire and 1,000 feeds in your Google Reader in anticipation of the smallest story popping up, then go for it. Otherwise, I would continue to search for more practical experience, even if it meant a few more months of a Ramen-noodle diet.

 

illmil, of course the internship won't help you get that beat writing job at a real newspaper. if this was 1999, that would be a realistic aspiration. today, it's not. no doubt you'll be pigeonholed by so-called mainstream journalists as a blogger who is not fit to be a beat writer at a real newspaper. but when those mainstream writers are out of work, you will be able to make a living in this business and feed your family.

 

Even if you are writing 10-15 "stories" a shift, you won't be getting any reporting experience. It's the other part of the job, finding out facts before spewing out copy and it sounds like you won't have any time for it. Ten stories, even with a mere two sources, would be 20 phone calls a day (assuming all sources are around and answer their own phones, you don't have to dig out any numbers or actually interact with one of them to get an answer). Let's say an average of 10 minutes a call....

Yep, that's bullshit.