The Plight of Unpaid Interns

The lack of laws protecting interns from exploitation has left millions of young Americans without options; it doesn’t matter what the definition of a “journalist” is, just that all acts of journalism are protected; meanwhile, as tea partyers attack Obamacare, why is no one in Congress talking about Medicare’s benefits? These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

How Washington Abandoned America’s Unpaid Interns A legal labyrinth has trapped millions of young Americans who work every year without pay, because they are called “interns” rather than “employees.”

Clifford I. Nass, Stanford Professor Who Studied Multitasking, Dies at 55 Clifford I. Nass, a Stanford University communication professor who studied human interaction with technology and challenged the idea that people can multitask effectively, died on Saturday.

Innovation Imperative: Change Everything When the first commercially successful steamship traveled the Hudson River in 1807, it didn’t appear to be much of a competitive threat to transoceanic sailing ships. It was more expensive, less reliable and couldn’t travel very far.

Israeli Army Avoids Confronting Settler Violence The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Central Command set a precedent by deciding to stop providing security for the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin in the Gush Etzion settlement cluster.

Why The Silence From The Sponsors Of The Superior Full Medicare for All? With the Tea Partiers relentless attacks on each of the troubles besetting Obamacare since its complicated, computer glitch-ridden startup on October 1, 2013, the compelling question is: Why aren’t the Congressional sponsors of H.R. 676 – full Medicare for all with free choice of physician and hospital – speaking out as strongly on behalf of this far superior universal health care coverage?

Let’s Stop Defining Who Is a Journalist, and Protect All Acts of Journalism This summer the Society for Professional Journalists debated a proposal to change its name to the Society for Professional Journalism.

Hey, Hey NSA: How Many Leaders Have You Spied On Today? First we had Spymaster James Clapper dismissing concerns about NSA spying abuses denounced worldwide with a reference to the movie Casablanca.

Twitter News Consumers: Young, Mobile and Educated Nearly one-in-ten U.S. adults (8%) get news through Twitter, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Linguist Says You Can Use ‘Like’ More. He’s, Like, Wrong. If you are under the age of 45, chances are that at some point somebody over the age of 45 has condemned your alleged overuse of the word “like.”