International Center for Journalists reviews

If you're looking to simply work (and only work) then come here. As an Intern, I didn't really feel like there were any opportunities for professional growth; I just came in, did my work, and left. In other words, it was robotic and felt meaningless. I certainly volunteered for other projects (even for other teams) just to find value in the tasks I was working on and sought professional advice from staff but nothing "wowed" me. For example, a lot of the intern work I did was very administrative, as expected, but my supervisor never encouraged asking questions about the non-profit industry, what it's like to break into the DC scene, or networking for a job in field of communications and journalism, non-profits, or a government agency. I did that all on my own by forging my own path towards professional development. On the other hand, I've worked for internships that created brown bag lunches to converse with staff members, one-on-one resume advice by the president of the company, career conversations from invited industry leaders, bi-weekly meetings between supervisor and intern, and so much more, all for the benefit of the intern and their short time at ICFJ. That said, I completely understand where ICFJ might stand on this: a temporary intern comes in to work and contributes little to the already penny-pinching company. Their time and money could be used to work on other employees' needs or projects. But it would have been nice to, as a student and intern, work and gain some industry insight in my short-time there. Additionally, the work culture is so bland. Don't get me wrong, the people were nice, but that's it. Not much interaction. Think of talking about the weather at the cooler. Every. Single. Day.

I moved to DC for this job and I left early to move away from DC so both the timing and my decision to leave have external influences. I think many people are seduced by the idea of working in media development or a media-related outfit, given the ubiquity of digital media "innovations" on a daily basis. But working on an interesting topic and supporting people who are doing that work directly are two very different things. I have not been in DC long enough to say certainly, but I feel the experience at ICFJ represents partly the work culture in DC and partly to an organization that isn't clear what value it adds to its participants. As a result, there is a lot of meetings, data-entry tasks, admin work, but not a sense employees are using their full skill set or empowered to take on significant projects.