Visits to Sony and NBC Universal (Bravo)

Media is very powerful, as the video above illustrates.

I spent the day in New York, joining the Media & Entertainment Club for two company treks, to Sony and NBC Universal (and Bravo therein). The latter is at now-famous 30 Rock. I saw no famous people. But they were both pretty fascinating visits ... two more media industries facing challenges parallel to those I encountered in newspapers.

NBC seems to have some neat internship opportunities, except that all their internships are unpaid. This is apparently not too uncommon in media. I don't know how I would pull of such a thing if this opportunity presented itself. Incidentally, I was expecting to hear this week from an internship I really do want, but did not. Maybe next week? Could be they didn't reach a decision; could be they extended offers to non-mes and are waiting to find out whether those offers are accepted or declined.

Given how stressful, time-consuming and uncertain the internship process is, I have to wonder whether it couldn't be a little more systematic. Here's an oversimplified hypothetical: Yale SOM has 223 people in the class of 2011. (That part's real.) And say that a certain number of companies extend a total of, say, 250 or 300 or 500 internship spots for the summer. They can be in a variety of functions and industries, and all nice, solid programs that would be good for MBA candidates to have. Why couldn't there be a system like when we registered for electives or for our international experience trip, whereby we apply and maybe rank our favorites, and then the companies can use that information and extend offers, and the match-up process is, well, guaranteed to happen! Is that so nutty? Supposedly we all passed some sort of rather rigorous screening to even be in this program -- we're already here. Surely there are quite a few companies who would be glad to have an intern from SOM for the summer. As I say, that's oversimplified, but there's got to be some better way to deal with this than the way it goes now, which, despite help from the school's Career Development Office, is, at the end of the day, every man for himself.