Intern Email Newsletter Teaches College Gophers How to Lose Their Prized Internships 38198

Intern Memo is the thrice-weekly email blast from Will and Theodore Bressman (the former is a LX.tv staffer, which means he’s met Lance Bass’ boyfriend). Supposedly the Memo helps the rank and file of free labor that keeps this city chugging along — keeping their spirits up with witty anecdotes about how bad other interns have it. Or, as they call it, “vignettes and career advice.”

It’s also a way to get people to lose their internships, like the way Rachel Berman is about to.

This morning’s edition includes an interview with Rachel Berman, “a 22-year-old Nor Cal native who graduated from Lander College in May with a degree in English and Communications.” She’s interning at the PR firm Zeno Group. This is how she describes her day:

Thursday morning finds me frantically following up with every hick newspaper in Brooklyn, trying to get them to print our client’s press release while using my brightest voice that hints not to the boredom-inducing contents. If the reporters don’t hang up on me, and if I’m pretty awake, I push them to set up an interview with our client, one that “I’d be happy to coordinate, smile smile,” and which will give us more ink, more coverage, and make the good ol’ client happy. Luckily, an entire dozen Brooklyn newspapers are owned by one friendly editor who takes my release and puts it out in all of them, giving me a nice bunch of clips to show my boss. It even goes online and gets caught up in a Google alert. Nearly half of an intern’s job is scouring Google alerts…but anyway. At least I didn’t end up like my fellow intern Sophia who contacted a tiny newspaper in Harlem, was blessed for her efforts, and was told to go find G-d.

Those rags in the BK just LOVE to be called “hick newspapers,” let us tell you. Good luck with your future prospects, Rachel. Perhaps we’ll hear about your losing your gig through a Google alert.