These Progressive News Outlets Want You to Work for Free

Power to the people (who have rich parents)

If you want to intern at Harper’s, the progressive monthly whose September cover story bemoans neoliberal greed and is titled “Labor’s Last Stand,” your parents better be paying your rent. And buying your groceries. Harper’s requires their interns to work full-time for three to five month periods in exchange for a MetroCard and zero dollars.

But if your parents, like most parents, can’t afford to send you off to volunteer full-time at Harper’s, you’re probably not missing much. The 168-year-old magazine used to publish the likes of John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath, and Noam Chomsky, but its upcoming October issue’s most talked-about piece is a self-pitying paean by John Hockenberry, the former WNYC host who was forced to leave his job after at least nine women accused him of inappropriate behavior, including unwanted touching and kissing. (In his Harper’s piece, Hockenberry compares his own sexuality to that of the 12-year-old girl in Lolita — not the best way to make readers think you’re a very normal non-creep.)

Unlike Harper’s, left-leaning news site Salon has not yet given a #MeToo’d man a platform to show off his rabid sense of entitlement using batshit literary references. What the two publications do share, though, is a reliance on unpaid interns.

“The idea that young people aren’t valued for their work should bother us,” reads a Salon piece decrying the rise of unpaid internships that was posted in late April. Two weeks earlier, Salon had emailed me about their own internship program, which pays zero dollars per hour and requires a commitment of at least three days per week.

Both Harper’s and Salon can and should do better. Come on, even Fox News pays its interns.