This is not a diatribe against employers who abuse unpaid interns, I promise. It's an entreaty for the news industry — media companies and others to step up and offer more internships — the kind that pay students to leave home for a few months every summer, learn to navigate a new environment and obtain advanced work skills.

The subject is on my mind for multiple reasons. Here are two of  them:

1) The American Society of News Editors has just released figures on Hispanics, African Americans and other non-white staff working in the newsrooms of the nation's daily papers. After a quarter of a century of professing concern about the lack of ethnic and racial parity in its member-papers' newsrooms, it moonwalked backward this year. 

2) A story in The New York Times focused on media employers who bring on interns, often unpaid,  and ask them to answer routine email, take phone messages,  polish doorknobs or sweep floors instead of letting them learn from substantial work assignments.

The story notes that some states and the federal government are cracking down on employers who "are illegally using" interns for free labor.

While the story doesn't offer hard data on offending employers or the prevalence of unpaid  internships, it does quote a career development officer at a nationally ranked university who sees "definitive evidence that the number of unpaid internships is mushrooming."

Unpaid internships in English and Spanish news media, especially among elite national publications and broadcast outlets, have been as common as rye grass for a long time; now they may be satisfying staffing shortages at some.

It makes sense for the government to get tough on employers who mistreat college interns, but let's not discourage the many well-meaning employers who offer legitimate internships (unpaid and paid) to help train the next  generation of professionals in fields such as news media, sports, advertising, business and accounting.

We need more internships, not fewer.

Currently, there aren't enough to accommodate all the students who need one. Selfishly, I don't want to see the opportunities shrink, making it harder for students from Hispanic-majority schools such as the University of Texas at El Paso on the U.S.-Mexico border, where I teach, to compete for these choice slots.

There are 1.3 million Hispanic undergraduates in the U.S. colleges and universities. Half of them attend the more affordable Hispanic-serving colleges and universities (those with 25% or more Hispanic enrollment), and they have enough trouble as it is competing for internships.

Many work part-time to help support themselves or their family. They can't afford to give up a steady paycheck to accept an unpaid internship in Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles.

This puts them at a huge disadvantage when they graduate. It's almost impossible to land a journalism job without practical experience in news media, usually obtained through internships.

I've witnessed quite a few recent frustrated journalism grads give up on their dream to work in the profession and instead take a job teaching, which is relatively easy in Texas if you have a bachelor's degree. One highly talented former student of mine, a broadcast major, recently called to ask if I knew of any opening in TV news.

It's been two years since he graduated and he still hasn't found a news job. As I recall, he never completed an internship outside our geographic area..

More than three-quarters of my UTEP students carry a full class load and work part- or full-time. Give them an option between a paid summer job stocking shelves or an unpaid internship in an expensive, far-off city, and you can guess which one they take.

On the other hand, students with a few internships under their belts are thriving. Their success stories should be incentive enough for today's budget-minded media recruiters to hire and pay interns.

For a few thousand dollars, a recruiter can help launch  the career of a bright, young media professional  who brings fresh ideas and cutting-edge technology skills  to newsrooms. It's a win for everyone.