Joe Kirby -- whose resume includes a degree in journalism from New York University and internships at The New York Times, New York Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, as well as the Chicago Tribune -- took a one-year "resident" position with the Tribune at the end of 1990. He covered three suburban towns, was hired last winter, and now covers crime in the suburbs.

The resident program? "It is steroids for your career," says Kirby, who is twenty-four.

Wilson Ring, thirty-five, was a fulltime stringer based in Honduras, writing for eight publications, including Time magazine, The Washington Post, Newsday, and the Chicago Tribune. After five years Ring wanted to come home. The Tribune offered him a "resident" spot in a one-man bureau in suburban McHenry County. After his year ended, however, Ring was let go. He now works for The Associated Press in Montpelier, Vermont. In retrospect, Ring says, he should have asked more questions about the resident position before taking it.

Some two dozen of these temporary employees -- also called "one-years" or "super-interns" -- have helped staff the Tribune's recent push into the outlying suburbs. And the Tribune is not alone. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have similar, older programs. The Seattle Times has started a small one. And in Philadelphia, the Inquirer recently hired fifty-five two-year "municipal correspondents" for its push into suburban areas around the city and in New Jersey. They have less experience and will receive more training that the Tribune residents, but the job is essentially the same -- and so is the likely outcome.

"We have no plans to hire these people. At the end of two years, we're not going to find you a job," says Arlene Morgan, the senior editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. "You have to take it for what it is. If you don't want it, then don't pursue it."

Still, job-hungry young journalists can't seem to help hoping that these super-internships will result in a permanent position, and they work extremely hard to make that happen.

The driving force behind the rise of the super-internship system is, in part, the media recession (see "How Bad Is It?" CJR, September, 1991 / October, 1991). "The dirty little secret," says Richard Kipling, hiring editor of the Los Angeles Times, "is that these positions -- whether they are ours or at The Philadelphia Inquirer or The Seattle Times or the Chicago Tribune -- are not permanent staff positions with accrued benefits. You're getting the top people of the young-applicant pool, and you don't have to pay them the full freight. It's symptomatic of an industry that's going more and more to part-time and temporary employment."

Millie Quan, an assistant managing editor at The Seattle Times, says her newsroom is already bulging with baby boomers who are "settling in." New slots are rare. In response, the paper started a three-year "news trainee" program for eight entry-level reporters and copy editors. The Times makes "no promises," Quan says, when the three years are up.

At the Chicago Tribune, managing editor Richard Ciccone says his newspaper, like the Inquirer, wanted to make a major suburban expansion, but did not foresee any slots in which to promote its foot soldiers when they got restless, five or ten years from now. So the Tribune hired forty-five super-interns on a temporary basis, paying them $ 642 perweek, the same as permanent entrylevel reporters without experience. "You do not build up a staff that has aspirations, with no ability to meet them," Ciccone says.

Unlike stringer positions, these longer-term programs attract reporters whose resumes include prestigious degrees, high-level internships, and, frequently, previous daily experience. They also tend to offer decent salaries and at least partial health benefits.

Municipal correspondents at the Inquirer, for example, receive $ 450 a week, and 60 percent health benefits (first-year reporter positions at the unionized paper say $ 595.22 per week), plus a chance to produce some substantial clips.

Two years into its resident program, the Chicago Tribune has hired six residents so far, and expects to hire a few more. At the Los Angeles Times, Kipling says, more than 25 percent of the reporter-trainees have been given full-time jobs. In October 1990, however, the paper halted the program. Most of the residents in the program were given one-year extensions; some of those were later hired.

Recruiters may caution against hope, but the super-interns persist in believing they can beat the odds. "It's wearing," says Sue Ellen Christian, a twenty-six-year-old Tribune staff member, hired last spring after a year in the resident program. "Everyone's nervous, everyone wants to get hired -- and everyone works very hard."

For Joe Kirby, also hired by the Tribune, the most routine stories took on added significance. He says he would check facts twice, three times, and sometimes four. "You feel like you have to be razor-sharp all the time," he says. "It was very, very taxing on the psyche."

Perhaps nowhere is the routine more grueling than at The New York Times. Called "nothing short of hazing" by one former clerk, the job offers a seven-hour-a-night clerical shift and the chance during the day to do free-lance work for the desk of your choice. After two years the clerks are evaluated on the basis of the stories they've sold to the paper. In a class of a dozen, two or three clerks will typically be promoted to reporter trainees, and from there almost certainly to the staff.

"I often found it very frustrating," says Ian Fisher, another former clerk, now finishing his stint as a reporter trainee in the Bronx bureau. "I was constantly questioning if I had the stomach to go on being a clerk for what was such a small chance."

History helps. Many of the paper's biggest names, notably Joseph Lelyveld, ran copy in their salad days. And Fisher notes that the program's benefits are obvious: clerks get to practice their craft with Times editors and reporters, people who are often their heroes. His own writing and reporting, Fisher says, improved dramatically -- even if he rarely got visible credit. Over the course of two years, he says, the Times metro section allowed him only one byline.

For every two or three temporaries who get hired, of course, there are a dozen who don't. Losing out, even against such tough odds, can sour some enthusiastic young journalists. "You have to understand," says one former super-intern, "they basically devastated our careers. We're in the process of rebuilding."

All of which begs a question: What is a newspaper's responsibility to these hopefuls?

Jack Hart, staff development director at the Portland Oregonian, is in charge of his newspaper's budding two-year training program. It includes weekly seminars, vocational instruction, and close work with supervising editors and mentors. While the three spots are currently limited to members of minority groups. Hart emphisizes that newspapers have a responsibility to offer more than resume filler to any temporary editorial staffer.

"If you bring somebody in with a journalism degree, put them into a resident program, pay them a different rate than a journeyman, and do nothing in the way of offering them an advanced educational opportunity, you are simply exploiting that person, pure and simple," he says. "You should have hired that person into a regular position in the first place."

But out in the world -- as recruiters, editors, and young reporters know all too well -- regular positions are exceedingly rare these days.

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