NC is now officially looking for an intern! We just sent in a notice at Columbia Journalism School (it will apparently take the administrators a day or so to post it), and the key part is below:
Naked Capitalism Intern Sought
Naked Capitalism, a leading finance and economics blog (1.4-2 million page views a month, regularly rated 8 or higher at Technorati among 30,000 business blogs), is looking for a savvy, energetic, and well organized intern. Start dates flexible. About 10 hours a week, for a minimum of three months, with preference given to candidates who can commit to longer term. Location NYC. $15 to $20 an hour, with rate dependent on ability of intern to take on important tasks and operate autonomously.
Our interns enjoy a great deal of control over their hours and work content. Interns can do the overwhelming majority of work remotely on their own schedule. And beyond providing assistance with a few high priority initiatives, we are also open to (indeed encourage) interns to devise and execute their own projects.
Tasking falls into three categories. We don’t expect an intern to take on everything, but to tell us which tasks fit their interests and skills best, and whether they think they have better ways to accomplish our goals. We are open to suggestion!
(1) Site Management
• Drafting text for a site redesign and participating in the redesign process
• Formalizing and field-testing the site’s style sheet and comments policy
• Tracking and interpreting site statistics
• Being on “shit happens” alert when the main bloggers are off the grid(2) New Media
• Devising and implementing a Twitter/social media strategy
• Devising and implementing a Podcast strategy(3) Content Creation
• Finding and soliciting new writers for the site
• Editing and posting articles contributed by guest writers
• Performing research, both intermediate term and quick turnaround
• Suggesting and writing posts, or taking a beat
Note we can pay someone thanks to your support in the fundraiser.
Also keep in mind, as the list above indicates, we want an intern that can help us on multiple fronts. We’ve had some candidates approach us who wanted to write for the site. While having someone generate content themselves is helpful, and we also understand that an intern might want to build a resume of published pieces, we need candidates who will take on other duties as well.
It is also NOT necessary that a candidate be in NYC.
Please put the word “intern” in the subject line of any messages about intern candidates and send them to yves@nakedcapitalism.com. Thanks for any help on this front!
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Just 10 hours a week for all that? Reduce hourly pay to 1/2 and ask for 20 hours!
kudos to NC for actually paying your interns, but I don’t think that makes them interns anymore, but rather paid staffers.
Hey – in Medicine interns get paid …
If interns do the work that paid employees would do, then legally they are supposed to be paid. In practice, they often aren’t however. The Atlantic just did an article, and there have been recent lawsuits for recovery of wages.
“There is a law in this country that says that internships must resemble an education and that interns cannot work in the place of paid employees, nor be of “immediate benefit” to an employer. If you have ever held an unpaid internship, you know just how routinely flouted that rule is.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-paradox-of-the-unpaid-internship/266964/
They are called paid interns at Columbia, which is where I am posting. I put up a job listing at Columbia previously with no pay and got no interns. If I want a grad student (and they will haver more relevant experience) I apparently need to pay. This isn’t about NC (as far as Columbia is concerned), unpaid internships there don’t get much/any uptake. $15 to $20 an hour is the going rate.
In general, unpaid internships are viable for brand name organizations that have resume value (in the mind of the students). The Atlantic has name recognition. Outside a comparatively small circle of fans, NC does not.
In addition, unpaid internships need to comply with IRS and DOL rules that require that the internship be substantially about training or learning of some sort and therefore needs to be structured. As you can see above, we want the interns to operate as autonomously as possible. That does not work for an unpaid internship.
“Drafting text for a site redesign and participating in the redesign process”
There are off-the-shelf, web based products that allow you to create threaded discussion groups (similar to NNTP) that are either stand-alone, or can branch off the main articles. The better ones allow readers to see which groups are active, who is participating, and who the latest poster is. That way you can get the comment bloggers off the main articles, thus leaving more room for impertinent interlopers like myself.
I didn’t know about the IRS and DOL rules. As a graduate student myself I think more than a few organizations don’t abide by these at all, though it’s good to see NC is keeping these well in mind.
That being said I certainly would not mind working on an unpaid basis for NC. I have seen several of my classmates as an undergrad who made the unpaid-to-paid transition as interns with great success, particularly because they had to be motivated to do the job without monetary compensation at the outset. Think of it as a test for dedication. Though Jeff’s comment about “rich kids” might certainly apply in several cases, I think many penniless students wouldn’t mind working for nothing than doing no work at all.
(I must admit I’m a bit biased since I’m applying for this intern position myself)
And I am definitely looking forward to seeing you working for free because, as you say, “any job is better than no job.”
Seriously, you just made my day. I couldn’t be more happy to hear this if I were John Taylor of Caroline himself.
:-)
Haha – well, why I didn’t say any job was better than no job, I’m glad to have given you a chuckle for the day. Allow me to amend my naive generalization and say that working for NC unpaid would be more worthwhile than not.
Greg Palast says – beware of rich kids
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism provides this contact for posting internship opportunities. If Yves’ or one representative of nakedcapitalism want, maybe a single email can be sent from yves@nakedcapitalism.com.
http://www.journalism.cuny.edu/career-services/for-employers/
“To have a job or internship description distributed to current students or alumni, please send your posting to Joanna Hernandez, Director of Career Services, joanna.hernandez@journalism.cuny.edu.”
I won’t name names, but some of the best liked writers on this site are “rich kids”.
But given the site’s political leanings, I sincerely doubt it would have much appeal to that population generally.
Crikey.
I know some really great, smart, hardworking kids.
Their parents in some cases happen to have a lot of money.
Their parents also put a lot of importance on civility, decent local government, honest accounting, good manners, considerate behavior, and a lot of other sensible things – including a good work ethic.
Looking for candidate who is energetic, driven, and willing to overthrow the established global economic order. Must like cats.
I think liking pictures of cats would be sufficient for NC. The rest sounds good though.
A good litmus test would be their reaction on learning of the systematic looting of the taxpayer by large financial firms. I’m guessing it will be some variant of one of these:
A) “That’s disgraceful! It has to stop!”
B) “How do I get a piece of that action?”
We obviously want the former and not the latter.
3/1 says someone tries to plant a mole.
my soft paw’d feline, Wilzen, gently removes faces of moles prior to presentations…can one imagine this crew with a hired mole
:-/
How long do you figure before they’d be found out? NC is one of the few sites I’ve seen with critical thinking skills and my bet is a mole would be converted or caught pretty darn quick.
Well in light of you other headline,
I hope that you hire an Anglo Saxon intern