Internships, again

My previous internship post -- poorly thought out, written, and just plain stupid -- brought out a lot of strong opinions from many of you. And even while the very positive "right on, man!" comments outweighed the "you are a jackass" ones by a huge margin, I feel that it is important to return to my formerly angry position to make a few things clear.

Most importantly (to me, and to those of you out there looking for a fall guy), my friend Travis had absolutely nothing to do with, and zero knowledge of, the writing of my last post. Even if he was angry about losing the internship, and he wasn't, he would have never expressed himself as I have chosen to, so please keep that in mind. Sorry buddy.

Secondly: I deeply regret any personal offense that any of you might have taken to my previous post. I expressed my anger without class, and I'll try to be more constructive in the future. More specifically, to Rita Reed, my former professor who probably has not even seen this, I'm sorry that I used such poor language anywhere near your name... I'm very fond of my time at Mizzou, and I respect your contribution to the industry and role as the head of CPOY. To the photo editor in question (who I've already contacted), and the winning candidate, I am also sorry and wish you the best this summer.

Thirdly: Bad language obviously clouds logic... which is a lesson that I already knew, but chose to ignore. Its true, I love to say "fucking" and a lot of other curse words... in the future I'll try to keep the important bits that I may wander into writing about more suited for Sunday morning, rather than Saturday night.

Fourthly: My post was meant to discuss internships as a part of the educational process in photojournalism... and though I was righteous and annoying about it, I had no intention of trying to right some perceived wrong doing. I was simply using a couple of specific examples to try and look at the larger picture.

Fifthly: This is what I meant to say last time... without the cussing.

Internships are a great part of photojournalism education, as long as they are used to give the inexperienced real world experience in a productive environment which treats the intern with the respect and pay that they deserve.

Internships without pay, or in place of full staff photographers due to cost-cutting, creates an unsustainable environment for the progress of the photography industry.

Graduates students who have significant experience gained in the workforce within photography should not be in competition with their inexperienced colleagues, in either internships or competitions, such as CPOY. Despite the rule about experience in the CPOY contest, there has been a history of experienced graduate students entering.

And that's about that... incredibly boring, isn't it?

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