Internships

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Fri Oct 05, 2007 4:17 pm

"The deadline for Washington Post intern applications is Nov. 1. ... College juniors, seniors and grad students are eligible. The application and information about the internship are online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/intern."

*** Washington Post internships often lead to "jobs." ***

trimtofit · **Posted:** Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:16 pm

... or to protracted ennui and a general sense of futility.

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:33 am

Are interns paid?
Yes. It is our policy to pay everyone who works for us, including interns. For summer 2006, the salary was around $825 per week.
*That sounds better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick*

trimtofit · **Posted:** Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:14 am

Pay is good. Copy editors make 10 percent more than the reporter minimums, plus a night shift differential. But Washington is not an affordable place to live.

Rim editors get two, maybe three stories to edit in a typical shift. If you're used to a faster pace, it can be quite an adjustment.

That said, it is a great place to learn a lot in a short time.

tommangan · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:54 am

Trim: please satisfy our curiosity and explain how one busies him/herself for an entire shift with only 2 or 3 stories.

I realize these are major presumptions, but it seems to me that with the Post attracting top-tier talent in both reporting and assigning editing, their copy could not possibly require such an investment of the desk's time.

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:55 am

Trim, same question as Tom.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:32 am

paulwiggins wrote:

Are interns paid?
Yes. It is our policy to pay everyone who works for us, including interns. For summer 2006, the salary was around $825 per week.
*That sounds better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick*

Wow. There are a lot of full-time permanent reporters and editors in this country who make less than that.

trimtofit · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:25 pm

The Post runs a lot of 40-inch-plus stories. So two or three stories can be a decent amount of copy. Everything gets at least three complete reads on the rim. That takes some time.

Every verifiable fact is double-checked against the paper's clips archive, Nexis or any of several other online or print references. This includes every name's spelling. Sometimes, there are two or three variant spellings, which occasions a discussion about which is preferred.

Numbers and dates get the same treatment. If a story says "the conflict in Darfur has killed more than half a million people and dislocated about 2.4 million since it began in 2003," there are three facts that need to be CQ'd.

Geographic references are checked against an atlas. If a story says "In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city about 180 miles north of Baghdad," that needs to be verified. This becomes reflexive after a while.

If there's a hole in a story, or an ambiguous formulation that needs to be clarified, the rim editor calls the reporter. This may involve waiting until it's at least 6:30 a.m. in Baghdad.

Headline specs are very tight, and the slots tend to have a pretty good idea of exactly what they're looking for. Rim editors often get two or three attempts to write a passable head. There is usually a discussion before the slot changes a headline.

Substantial edits usually involve a discussion with the assigning editor, the reporter or both.

After the first edition goes to bed, the copy desk waits for proofs to read. Proofreading at The Post is sort of like a second rim-and-slot cycle. Edits to subsequent editions are not limited to the correcting of errors missed the first time around. Editors may revise or fine-tune headlines, and this occasions another round of discussion.

As I said before, the pay is good. This year, copy editors were paid $924 per week, which is 10 percent above the Guild minimum for reporters. That is not a lot of money in Washington, but it's enough to live on.

I would not call working at The Post a "Job from Hell," but I only spent 12 weeks there. I would go back in a heartbeat.

copynomad · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:07 am **Posts:** 623

They're all staff stories, by the way. Surprisingly, there are bad reporters and assignment eds even at top papers. You're pretty much working the whole time even though it sounds like a light workload. Metro copy eds do more because the paper zones. I find spending that much time with any story is like chewing the same food over and over. There are smaller papers that pay better than the Post, especially with the cost of living in D.C.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:08 pm

"Surprisingly."

copynomad · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:07 am **Posts:** 623

Ha, should've said "dishearteningly."

LAEdtr · **Posted:** Sun Oct 14, 2007 1:38 am

Even at big papers, live stories from the metro staff at 9 p.m. can take quite a while to get into not-embarrassing shape.

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