When she attended the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences (FJSC), within the University of Bucharest, Elena believed that journalists were well paid, and opportunities to meet people were everywhere. “I imagined that we would come to college and that they would teach us, that we would talk like anchors from the instant news, that we would go see television studios, that we would meet the people there,” she says. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
A car leaves Liviu Dragnea’s garage, after the High Court sentenced him to 3 years and 6 months in prison, on May 27, 2019Photo: Inquam Photos / Octav Ganea
The first paid job was actually an internship, which Elena (we’re using her first name, because she doesn’t want to conflict with her former employers) started in the fall of 2020, with college, at a newly opened news site. The team was young and not all of them had a degree in journalism, and the editor-in-chief did not explain things to them and treated them inappropriately, says Elena.
“I went to him with a news story – of course I didn’t know how to write it – and he looked at me like that and said: “You come to me with this mess, do you think I’m a fool?!”. And he started yelling at me and making me do all that.”
Elena stayed only one week in the internship which was paid 1,000 lei per month, per employment contract and which she remembers was part-time.
