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When I interviewed for a Washington Monthly internship in March, I was contemplating abandoning journalism, even though I hadn’t finished journalism school. After completing a final summer newsroom stint at the 56-year-old magazine (assuming I was accepted), I’d find a job that paid the bills. “Anything that doesn’t make the world a worse place,” I told myself.
I was readying to jump ship because the kind of in-depth writing jobs I wanted were rare and, if you could manage to snag one, too financially unstable for those of us with looming student debt. Besides, I’d been told in J-school that nobody reads long-form pieces anymore. And I thought any article I managed to pen was unlikely to reach those who didn’t already agree with me.
I hadn’t turned gloomy in a vacuum. My journalism master’s program was heavy on professors’ nostalgia for staff writing positions that no longer existed, and award-winning freelancers spilling the beans on commercial copywriting gigs they settled for to make ends meet. It was peppered with the grim bromides for today’s news industry. “Write like no one will read past the third paragraph, because odds are they won’t,” one professor advised. “We don’t do this for the money,” guest speakers explained. “Long-form writing? Paid? On staff? Forget about it,” our mentors pounded into us. While I was there, my favorite teacher left journalism altogether.
My Monthly summer as a paid intern—many news outfits don’t pay interns–poked holes in my morose preconceptions, revealing glimpses of the sun. Like every newbie here, I fact-checked and worked on my own stories. My first Monthly piece—on how AmeriCorps acts as an antidote to brain drain, inspired by having returned to my rural hometown through a national service program—got a shoutout in Politico’s “Playbook,” meaning that someone buckled in for a 2,000-word-plus piece. And on my second piece, the editors pushed me to appeal to readers who might disagree. The Monthly still believes in the power of persuasion.
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Working on the Washington Monthly’s annual College Guide, which celebrates underdog universities that focus on educating non-wealthy students over prestige or profit, the Monthly’s core mission became clearer for me. I knew this magazine offered ideas to benefit working-class Americans. What I learned is that the Monthly staff intelligently and relentlessly breathe life into those ideas. Write, and it may come to pass. History backs my superiors’ faith. After two decades of the Washington Monthly College Guide, some universities stopped participating in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, citing the rankings’ bias toward selectivity over affordability and social mobility. In 2023, U.S. News & World Report also revised its college rankings to align more closely with the Monthly’s methodology. This magazine has a time-honored tradition of subtle, meaningful influence.
Sure, at times, I’ve struggled during my first semester in the Monthly’s J-school. It’s easy to be intimidated by the cast of thinkers this place cultivates, from former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan to TIME correspondent Eric Cortellessa to Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson to my fellow editors today. Moreover, solutions-based policy journalism is a daunting challenge, as the MAGA movement is taking a wrecking ball to the institutions required to enact change.
But improving today’s grim governance means offering voters better options, and, despite my doomsday career musings, I’ve landed in a place that does just that. “Not many people get to do this in their lives,” our editor-in-chief, Paul Glastris, said recently. He meant to shape national conversations, arming policymakers and constituents alike with ideas for the greater good. Glastris started as an intern, too.
The Washington Monthly has convinced me to stay the course. I’ll keep faith that great ideas—tested, challenged, and refined—can shape public debate.
If you think our brand of independent solutions-based journalism, and the opportunity the Monthly provides for young writers to become lifelong journalists, is essential, there’s something you can do: Make a donation.
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All the best,
Gillen Tener Martin
Associate Editor
