For Lauren Indvik, a business editor and soon-to-be co-editor in chief at Fashionista, the 2008 internship at Vogue was worth every sacrifice.
The 15 pounds frantically lost in the weeks before the interview. The predawn drive from New Hampshire to Times Square. The bed shared with a fellow penny-pinching friend near Pennsylvania Station, and the morning and evening walks — in heels — because she could not afford subway fare. “It’s so valuable,” she said.
So it was with a measure of shock and dismay that Ms. Indvik greeted the news on Wednesday that Condé Nast was closing down its internship program. A spokeswoman for the company, whose publications include The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Vogue, confirmed that the program would end, but said current interns would not be affected.
The move, first announced in Women’s Wear Daily, comes about four months after two formers interns sued Condé Nast, claiming they had been paid below minimum wage for the summer jobs at W Magazine and The New Yorker. The case, still pending, is one of several recent lawsuits filed by low-paid and unpaid interns in the media field.
Hearst Magazines was sued by a former Harper’s Bazaar intern last year, and this past spring a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures broke laws for not paying two interns who worked on “Black Swan.”
Yet several former and current Condé Nast interns said...
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