The Associated Press’ announcement at the height of internship application season that it is giving the program a year off was greeted with appeals from journalism organizations to keep it going.
Richard Prince has been covering the decision in his Journal-isms column on the Maynard Institute website and reports skepticism that the program will come back.
Several organizations have asked the AP to stay in the internship business. It has been a national leader in diversifying journalism and its absence will have widespread harm. It seemed in some years the AP was doing more to get Native American journalists, in particular, into the business than anyone else. A lot of minority and non-minority journalists have an AP internship as one of their early breaks, and journalism in general has grown because of them.
Even if the program is resuscitated for 2012, the AP is putting a major kink in its talent pipeline. Prince reported that the AP also plans to sit out national journalism conventions as it weighs its budget. (A related item by Jim Romenesko described the tussles the AP is having in negotiations.)
A break in internships and recruiting even for a year will put a long-lasting hurt on the AP. The hiatus snaps off existing relationships, it prevents new relationships from forming and it reduces the organization’s effectiveness on the other side of the break. A one-year stop easily can cost more than two or three years worth of talent, and resumption comes with some start-up costs.
News organizations that suspend recruiting don’t stop hiring, they just settle for crummier hiring. They pick from a smaller pool, they are shorthanded longer and they know less about the candidates who are out there and about those they hire.
Prince reported that Tony Winton, president of the News Media Guild, told him AP said the program costs $600,000 to $800,000 a year. That’s not money out the window, of course, because the 22 interns generate content that the AP sells.
One hire, one gem of a hire, can become a million-dollar decision in a little more than a dozen years. A hire who is not as good because you weren’t paying attention to the talent pool might cost a million bucks, you just didn’t spend it as well.
Suspending the internship program and recruiting, even for just a year, may prove to be penny wise and pound foolish.
Worth noting, however, is that the AP still lists 2011 internships on its website.
Candidates who have been caught short by the decision now will have to press other targets harder and will have to do more outreach to the AP to stay on the radar.
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Coming Friday: How to raise your profile in LinkedIn searches.