Over the past few years, Condé Nast has dealt with its fair share of intern scandal. In 2012, the publishing company was hit with a lawsuit by former interns at W magazine and The New Yorker. In the aftermath, the internship program was shut down abruptly in 2013. With titles like Vogue, GQ and Glamour, Condé Nast is the ultimate goal for many magazine editor hopefuls—and whatever one’s opinion on unpaid internships, the lack of an internship program in its entirety (and at such a prestigious company) meant it would be that much harder for aspiring journalists to score valuable experience in the industry before it came time to apply for jobs.
As the settlement comes to a close (former Condé interns have until June to file forms to collect), the publishing company is now moving forward with plans to help young writers and editors get a foot in the door through a paid fellowship program. Similar to what other publications (like the Huffington Post, Google and Buzzfeed) are doing, the program will pay its participants a stipend for full time employment over a six-month period.
So what does this mean for collegiettes? A paid fellowship is likely to involve higher-level work than what an intern at the company may have done, meaning the experience could prove to be more valuable. A former Wired fellow (though it’s a Condé Nast publication, the magazine has been running its own fellowship program) told Racked that “you do get the chance—pretty much guaranteed—to write for the front section of the magazine.” But you’ll still probably be considered the lowest member on the totem pole: “Because they pay you, there’s not that requirement that everything you do be educational, so I washed dishes, I mailed a ton of things, I really did a ton of the grunt work that the office needed done because we basically were office managers along with being editorial assistants,” the former fellow said.
Another downside is that because the fellowship will require full time availability, there might not be much opportunity for current college students to participate. In addition, because the pool of elegibility is so much wider with a paid position, there will be much more competition for spots that are sure to be limited and highly covetable.
If you do land a fellowship at Condé Nast, you’ll have the opportunity to work side-by-side with industry insiders and network with some of the most talented people in the publishing world, which—aside from the hands-on experience—is invaluable. But don’t expect those six months to turn into a permanent, full time job:
“It’s more like, I’m still a journalist and the people that I met there work at all these different places in the industry and I still see them regularly,” the former Wired fellow explained. “Now, you have their name on your resume and that means a lot. So it furthered my career in a lot of ways even though it didn’t mean that I ended up working at Wired.”
What do you think about this change, collegiettes? Will this program make it easier or harder for college women to get a foot in the door? Are you looking forward to applying for the fellowship after graduation, or would you rather see an intern program that would allow current students more of an opportunity to get that real world experience?