White Collar Reset: A crazy idea ... or is it?

So I've had a few days to digest the latest job-loss data. Parsed one way and the numbers actually don't seem all that bad. An official rate of 9.4 percent, a .1 improvement over the month before, this could almost be the start of something, no? Of course, then you gnaw into the next couple of data points, and include those who can only find part-time work or have grown too depressed to keep looking, pushing the figure up to 16.3 percent. Or notice how a record 5 million of us have now been out of work six months or longer. And you realize what a fright show we're still dealing with here.

That's why I recently came up with a solution to my own pixel of the unemployment picture that I don't think any other jobless 47-year-old suburban New Jersey magazine editor with two mortgages has considered before: I'm weighing an offer to go to work for a new media start-up. As an unpaid intern.