Late last month, ProPublica launched a Kickstarter to cover the costs of hiring an intern to help with our internships investigation. Our intern will create a microsite on the intern economy, traveling around the country to collect interns' stories that will supplement and enhance our more traditional watchdog reports. But to do this, we need to raise $22,000 by June 27.

Our editor-in-chief Steve Engelberg sat down with ProPublica's community editor Blair Hickman and news application fellow Jeremy Merrill to talk about our unique approach to investigating the intern economy.

"Beyond the Kickstarter, from a reporting perspective and project perspective, what's particularly noteworthy about this is we're starting with community and we are starting with data and news applications," said Hickman about the project. "We've said from the get-go, we are investigating internships and we're doing this in a very open way — which is a little bit different than our normal investigations. And because of that, we've gotten a ton of tips flooding in and we're starting to do news reports off of that. But it's starting with the crowd."

Please donate and help us reach our goal so that we can launch a full investigation. As Hickman and Merrill note, the money will help us cover the reporting intern's salary, travel and production costs. Click here to support this campaign.