LA Times INTERNSHIP

I guess this is the way of the world now... hiring out students to do what was once a regular, fulltime job!

LA Times Graphics Internship (paid)
We're looking for a student who can work with the LA Times graphics department to prepare maps, charts and other information graphics for print and web. Students need to have some experience with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, and knowledge of a 3D drawing program would be a plus. Some familiarity with Adobe Flash would also be helpful. A
journalism background is preferred but not essential.
Pay would be about $9 per hour.
Please send your resume to: Les Dunseith, Graphics Director (Les.Dunseith@latimes.com)

 

I feel what you're saying but this clearly isn't a permanent position and it's $9/hr. I understand jobs are tight (I'm unemployed myself) but you have to hire SOMEONE at the entry level.

 

Can you actually live in L.A. at $9/hr? Just curious.

 

That's what I wondered, 98. I imagine people working at fast food joints make about that kind of scratch.

 

Yes, but for this industry, a graphics internship with the L.A. Times could be considerably more valuable.

Even if it didn't last forever -- something that's not probably out of the realm of possibility if you did a good job, based on the fact that the Times has been keeping interns on to continue covering major beats and gaining valuable clips in recent years as a way to offset staff shortages and layoffs -- you would gain invaluable digital layout experience and clips, not to mention experience with some electronic layout programs that all of us could use and probably wish we had these days.

If you are a copy editor, you might be an endangered species, as referenced on another thread. If you are a copy editor who also is doing, or can do, layout/graphics, you are probably safe, at least for the time being, on the Times' undermanned desk.

Look at almost every desk-jockey job ad. They don't want you to just be able to edit. Invariably, you must be able to do layout, and have experience with all the current such programs, in order to be considered seriously for the jobs.

Anyone completing this internship, and doing well in it, at a major-metro paper no less, will have a good chance at future employment even if/when this internship ends.

That is, assuming they don't just stay at the Times, which, if you'll recall, has opportunity there at all because its desk was recently raided by ESPN L.A.

So, my suggestion to someone in the area would be to live at home, or find someone with whom to live as roommates, and make the best, financially, of something that actually could end up being a good situation, the minimal pay notwithstanding.

There are some good, talented and helpful layout people on the L.A. Times desk, even as thinned out as it is. Take advantage of this internship. I wish I could.

 

I don't doubt the experience would be top-notch and I'm sure an internship from the L.A. Times could lead to some great things in the future. I'm just saying for someone with little to no savings as it is, could a person get a place in a relatively safe place and afford the basic things a person needs on $9/hr in L.A.

I know it could be done in a smaller place where the cost of living isn't as high. I know nothing about L.A. and what is cost to live there, so I was just wondering.

 

Generally in these types of deals they put out the word to staffers to see if someone has a spare room they would like to rent to an intern cheap.