Inside V Magazine’s Unpaid Internship Program
Interns speak out about questionable treatment at one of New York’s leading independent women’s fashion magazines.
Angela, a fan of both high-end apparel and Instagram, attended college in New York City largely because she wanted to intern at Seventeen or Cosmopolitan. “I wanted to do straight up fashion,” she says. (Names in this piece have been changed at the request of subjects concerned about employment.) A year into school, as Angela was preparing to apply for unpaid internships at the two renowned women’s magazines, Hearst, their parent company, announced it was restricting its internship program, eliminating some unpaid internship positions and changing others to paid writing fellowships — essentially temporary staff positions — for graduates. Angela was no longer eligible.
Hearst had changed its program amid a class-action lawsuit from former unpaid interns who claimed they had performed valuable work without educational benefit at a for-profit institution, which would entitle them to minimum wage under federal and state law. A judge sided with Hearst on appeal in 2017, but Condé Nast, their industry rival, was not so lucky. In a similar class-action suit settled in 2014, the publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and others famously paid out $5.8 million to former interns while facing nasty press coverage, like the 2013 New York Post headline, “Condé Nast intern: ‘I cried myself to sleep.’” Condé Nast then transitioned to a paid fellowship program too.
With the two largest fashion publishers ruled out, “I freaked the fuck out,” Angela says. Following an advisor’s recommendation to look into independent magazines, she found V magazine, which advertises its unpaid positions to New York University and New School students.
V boasts 1.5 million Instagram followers and has been called “‘The Establishment’ among indie fashion titles” by New York Magazine’s The Cut. Its glossy covers have featured everyone from Beyoncé and Mariah Carey to Marc Jacobs and Lady Gaga. V’s immense following, celebrity bona fides, and lack of Hearst or Conde Nast-style corporate oversight allow the magazine to rely heavily on free labor from starstruck, résumé-conscious undergrads trying to enter the field. (V did not reply to repeated requests for comment, but we’ll update if they do.)
“A legal unpaid internship is not designed to come up with a product usable to the employer,” says William Martucci, an attorney and law professor specializing in employment law. But over a series of interviews in April and May with five former V interns, NYU Local found that unpaid interns consistently perform work essential to V’s operation, often finding themselves in unexpected roles.
Once Angela joined V as an intern, she began coming to the magazine’s SoHo office three or four days a week while attending college full-time, then five days a week during summer break. V’s supervisors were known to be demanding — another former intern says she skipped class multiple times when her supervisor needed help, and four said they were asked to come in outside of agreed-upon hours.
After several months at V, Angela’s supervisors gave her a role independently producing content for the magazine’s website, and extended privileges not afforded other interns. One intern who worked at V with Angela during this period told NYU Local, “Angela wasn’t an intern. She was an unpaid employee.”
According to Angela, several V staff members also agreed she was more than an intern. “About a year in, some of the editors and my friends were like, ‘you need to get paid, you’re on staff,’” she says. But when interns brought up the subject of payment, managing editor Nancy Gillen would quickly rebut them saying, interns don’t get paid.
Angela ended up spending almost half her time in college working unpaid at V. “It’s crazy when I look back on it,” she says. “It toughened me up.” When told about Angela’s situation, Martucci, the labor lawyer, said, “In most circumstances, this would have to be a paid internship because the person is doing work that is just like anyone else that works at the same enterprise.”
Jane, another former V intern still in the industry, recalls being offered a similar unpaid position after having been a regular V intern for several months. She refers to the role as a “pseudo-job,” because her supervisor refused to give it a title. “It was an unpaid, consistent position, considered higher than intern,” Jane says. “With respect, an email, and a desk.” (In addition to personal emails, Jane says assigned desks are also withheld from regular interns, who typically worked in common areas.)
Jane’s supervisor requested eight stories per week in exchange for this new, unpaid position, according to emails reviewed by NYU Local. After Jane expressed interest in the role, however, she says her supervisor denied that their conversation in which she’d offered the role had ever taken place. “She didn’t want me to out her,” Jane says, and implies that her supervisor knew she was skirting the law.
The New York State Department of Labor lists 11 legal guidelines for unpaid internships at for-profit institutions. Among the rules, based on state and federal law: “The intern does not perform the routine work of the business on a regular basis,” “If interns receive the same level of supervision as the employer’s regular workers, it suggests an employment relationship,” and “Any benefit to the employer must be merely incidental.”
The degree of independence V supervisors gave Angela and promised Jane as unpaid interns may violate these guidelines, as may the interns’ role in producing online content vital to operations.
As part of these guidelines, the New York Department of Labor also forbids interns from performing clerical work. Emily, another former V intern, calls it “bitch work.” She claims she was less favored than interns like Angela and Jane, and was therefore assigned menial tasks.
“I had to meet Stephen Gan’s very specific needs,” Emily says, referring to V’s editor-in-chief. Every day she was at V, Emily says she was sent to Dean & Deluca, where she would call Gan’s assistant and list the upscale grocery’s daily selection of soups. If the editor-in-chief didn’t want any of those soups, Emily would then go to another store or restaurant and repeat the process, making sure to pick up Gan a bottle of Evian water en-route. Emily would also run to Cha Cha Matcha prior to Gan’s meetings to fetch him tea.
When Gan didn’t need her, Emily says she spent much of the rest of her time delivering magazines throughout the city using a supervisor’s MetroCard, though she says other unpaid interns had to cover their own subway and taxi fares.
“The only positive thing about V was that I met a lot of great friends,” Emily says. “But otherwise, I only learned how to run errands quickly.” Another intern says the only thing she learned was how to package mail. Both unpaid interns say they performed clerical work, which would be done legally by paid interns or administrative staff.
The willingness of V interns to do valuable work for free reflects a larger dilemma facing students interested in media. Employers consider an applicant’s internships more important than their college major, GPA, or extracurricular activities, according to a 2012 Chronicle of Higher Education study, yet internships at big-name publishers like Hearst and Condé Nast are becoming less accessible or nonexistent. This can lead undergrads to take unpaid positions at publications with lower labor standards.
“You do wonder if eliminating unpaid internships dries up opportunities for some folks,” says Martucci. “But on the other hand, employers only need to pay a really modest amount.”
Correction: September 26, 2018
An earlier version of this article included potentially identifying information. It has been updated to protect sources’ anonymity.
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