GRN, an agency for foreign correspondents, has posted a video interview with freelancer Portia Walker.

In the first in a series of interviews from GRN, Walker talks about her year covering the Arab spring in Yemen and Libya.

A former TV current affairs producer with Al Jazeera English, Walker explains how she moved to Yemen just before the Arab spring began.

She speaks about the “baptism of fire” in reporting from Yemen for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Washington Post and the Economist as well as GRN’s TV and radio clients.

Expecting to spend time in Libya researching features, she found she was spending her time “daily news reporting” which “did not go down well at some times with the authorities” and led to her arrest a gun point.

You can find out more about GRN in this Q&A interview and read guide on how to become a roaming reporter.

The video interview is below.

Similar Posts:

• Al Jazeera launches Twitter dashboard to track uprisings
• New York Times: Arab Spring reshapes market for TV news
• BBC CoJo: New opposition newspaper launched in Libya
• The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 22-28 October
• Media release: Yemen Times launches new website and restores lost archive

The SplinterNet blog provides an interesting insight on how news organisations can increase their Google News ranking.

Writing on the blog, Oliver Conner explains that “Google doesn’t divulge the secrets of its trade – so it is up to the SEO specialists to try and work it out” and links to a September study which asked the top SEO practitioners of major news organisations what they thought were the most important factors.

He highlights some of the “most important/interesting considerations” – and the terrifying suggestion that one spelling mistake can “blacklist your site”.

1. Category authority – if you keep writing optimised stories about a topic then you will gain authority in that area;
2. Keywords in headline and page titles;
3. Domain authority – the news organisation domain has lots of quality inbound links’;
4. Social sharing – lots of tweets, Facebook shares and Google+ mentions. This is set to become more important, as it has recently been announced that articles that your friends have G+’d will be highlighted;
5. First to publish the story – this will increase the amount of inbound links;
6. Citation rank – the number of high quality sites that link to (cite) a news story;
7. Unique articles;
8. High CTR (click through rates) – the more clicks a site gets from either Google News or other Google SERPs (search engine results page);
9. Quality content – Google evaluates the quality of the content and looks for things like typos and copied content. Apparently, one spelling mistake can blacklist your site!
10. Use of Google News XML sitemap – a way of structuring your news site in a way that Google can easily understand.

The post “Getting to the top of Google News” is worth reading as it also includes other important factors to consider when thinking about optimising your news site for Google News.

Journalism.co.uk has a couple of handy guides on search engine optimisation:

• How to: get to grips with SEO as a journalist
• How to: write headlines that work for SEO

Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired – media in motion conference for journalists will have a workshop on SEO for journalists. The agenda is at this link.Similar Posts:

• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – write lists, get links
• Reporters to get author pages with Google’s new authorship markup
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Use Technorati to monitor incoming links
• How to get the most from Google News feeds
• Google News US launches ‘standout’ tag so news sites can highlight top content

The Dart Center blog has audio from a panel debate discussing the difficulties of reporting on “violence and tragedy” as a journalist, which according to this post, features journalist Marianne McCune and a former winner of a Dart Award Rob Perez.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to perform integrated storytelling
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – covering street protests
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – audio and photo slideshow inspiration
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – use Posterous for quick and easy blogging
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – phone and tablet tricks for blogging from the field

Today is National Freelancers’ Day. We have compiled a list of 10 things every freelance journalists should know.

We crowdsourced and gathered advice for freelance journalists from fellow freelancers and editors.

Here are some of the responses:

Similar Posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – work directory for freelancers
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• The Content Makers: How much are freelance journalists getting paid?

Image by monkeywing on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

To mark National Freelancers’ Day we have been gathering advice for freelance journalists. Here is our Storify of curated tweets of advice for freelancers.

Our 10 tips include thoughts from freelancers and editors who responded to a request for advice from @journalismnews on Twitter, and we have added advice gathered over the years.

1. Don’t be afraid to pitch to editors (by email)

Commissioning editors positively encourage you to approach them with ideas and pitches.

journalismnewsJournalism.co.uk

It’s national #freelanceday. Share your tips and help us create a list of 10 things every freelance journalist should know

Nov 23FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @journalismnews↑

@david_rae
David Rae@journalismnews As an editor, I’m surprised how infrequently freelancers pitch to us – we pay for ideas as much as words…
Nov 23 via TweetDeckFavoriteRetweetReply

journalismnewsJournalism.co.uk

It’s national #freelanceday. Share your tips and help us create a list of 10 things every freelance journalist should know

Nov 23FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @journalismnews↑

@ArjaSalafranca
Arja Salafranca@journalismnews & oh yes don’t phone me w/ story ideas. I can’t give a yay or nay w/out consulting diary & budget. Email me, wait a few days
Nov 23 via Twitter for BlackBerry®FavoriteRetweetReply

2. Recognise that it is tough to go it alone

Make no mistake, it is not easy to start out as a freelancer. It requires you to be a great journalist, sales person, book keeper, networker and you need to be able to manage your own time. There may be periods when you are working long days on multiple features, at other times you may have too much free time.

Journalism.co.uk has a number of must-read guides, which can help if you are just starting out.

This updated feature on how to get started as a freelance journalist is an essential.

You can also take tips from this guide on how to effectively diversify as a freelancer, plus there is a two-part guide on how to make a successful transition to freelance journalism.

It may be hard, but believe in yourself and don’t give up.

journalismnewsJournalism.co.uk

It’s #freelanceday so we’re putting together a post on things that every freelance journalist should know. Share you tips

Nov 23FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @journalismnews↑

@ruth_stokes
Ruth Stokes@journalismnews Persistance is extremely important, and often key to landing commissions. If at first you don’t succeed… #freelanceday
Nov 23 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

3. Get a handle on your finances

Some freelancers advise getting an accountant, others manage their own accounts and submit their own self-assessment tax return.

It is wise to put away one third or one quarter of what you earn. That way you will have a lump sum ready when the 31 January deadline comes round. Alternatively you can set up a standing order to pay HMRC monthly so that you don’t face a large bill in January.

Self-assessment tax returns are relatively simple to fill in. You can make the process much easier by keeping expenses and receipts in a series of envelopes, one for every month of the year.

4. Invoice, politely remind, and then take action

Invoice after you have submitted your story, and give publishers a deadline, perhaps 14 or 30 days.

If you do not receive payment, telephone the accounts department and ask that the bill is settled.

Freelancers can feel awkward about hassling publishers for payment and may fear not being commissioned in the future. However, you are entitled to that payment, your own rent or mortgage needs to be paid and it is likely you won’t have a large cash flow.

If the publication delays, £2 + VAT will get you a legal Letter Before Action from a debt collection agency such as Thomas Higgins. An official letter will no doubt encourage slow payers to speed up.

This Journalism.co.uk guide on how to get paid on time has some excellent tips, advice on setting your own terms, chasing payments and threatening legal action.

5. Do not let others steal your work

Simon Crofts, a former lawyer who is now a photographer, has written about claiming damages for breach of copyright on EPUK (Editorial Photographers UK).

The article, published last week, details copyright law, what you are entitled to claim from an infringer, and how to assemble and present a claim. Although aimed at photographers, nearly all of it is relevant to writers who have had their articles ripped off.

6. Be strict with yourself

There is a danger of working too hard or not putting in enough hours and therefore losing potential commissions.

journalismnewsJournalism.co.uk

RT @manshark: If you don’t get paid chase it immediately, and regularly. Some accounts teams are notorious for complacency #freelanceday

Nov 23FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @journalismnews↑

@theannatobin
Anna Tobin@journalismnews even if you’re busy try to do at least two pitches a week to keep the work flow going
Nov 23 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

7. Think pictures

Consider selling your stories and photographs as a package. You could partner with a photographer or source your own images.

Selling a words and pictures package can make a story more appealing to a busy editor, and it could boost the amount you earn.

8. Consider syndicating abroad

This is not relevant for every type of content but there are various agencies who can sell on features for you, providing you have the rights to sell the story outside the UK.

This Journalism.co.uk guide details how to syndicate freelance articles abroad.

There is also a recently launched Canada-based platform called MediaCooler that maybe worth uploading content to. Journalism.co.uk has published a question and answer interview with MediaCooler’s CEO.

9. You need help from others when going it alone

Working from home and not having an employer to support you can be lonely and challenging. There is no editor or colleague to turn to for advice, there is no social contact, no post-work drinks or office Christmas party.

In order to learn from others and benefit from a support network, join a local freelancers’ meetup group, become a member of Journalism.co.uk’s freelance directory, which not only provides exposure but also gives you access to other freelancers with years of experience and those just starting out.

Also, set yourself an annual budget to pay for yourself to go on training courses (Journalism.co.uk runs one-day training courses, and has links to other short courses), attend journalism conferences (such as our news:rewired event where you can learn about the latest trends in digital journalism), and go to networking events.

10. Take advantage of the quiet month

The second half of December and first half of January is deadly quiet for many freelancers. You can either twiddle your thumbs and worry that you will never land a commission again or you can take advantage of the freelance life and go on holiday for a month.

For more news for freelancers, bookmark the freelance news section of Journalism.co.uk.

• The freelance database on Journalism.co.uk contains hundreds of members from all over the world. A listing includes an individual page on the site where you can post links to your work, as well as a branded email address – yourname@freelancejournalism.com and access to the freelancejournalism.com group. You will also be able to purchase discounted training courses run by Journalism.co.uk. Sign up as a freelancer here.

Similar Posts:

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• Fox News Twitter account hacked, claims Obama is dead
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• Twitter, journalists and court coverage: where to draw the line?

So you think you know Twitter? But do you know how to archive tweets, set up an RSS feed of a Twitter stream or have private group chat?

Here are some practical, technical tips to help you:

1. Learn to love Twitter’s own advanced search. Since being updated earlier this year, Twitter’s search options have become much more powerful than they once were. You can use the advanced search page, but it’s worth learning a few shortcut commands you can use on the Twitter homepage. For example,

Type to: in the search box on Twitter’s home page to get messages sent to you or to a particular username.

Find local tweets using near: and within: This is a tip sent by journalism student Jeroen Kraan @KraanJ when we were discussing Twitter tips on @journalismnews.

There is a list of more Twitter advanced search commands here.

2. Search tweets using Topsy. Topsy is Google for social media, a search engine that allows you dig part way into the unimaginably vast Twitter archive.

3. Get to know other search tools. Search tweets using Snap Bird. This is a really handy tool that allows you to search a user’s timeline or your own account. Try PostPost to search and “strip search” your timeline. PostPost will ask for your email address, send you a link and then you can dig deep within your timeline, searching for a specific hashtag or user.

4. Set up an RSS feed. You can set up feeds of your own or any other user’s Twitter updates.

To add a feed of tweets from a user copy and paste the following, replacing xxxx with the user name.

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/xxxx.rss.

This method doesn’t work for Google Reader but is compatible with RSS readers such as NetNewsWire.

To set up a keyword RSS feed use the following URL, replacing Journalism.co.uk / journalism jobs with your search query.

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=journalism.co.uk

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=journalism jobs

There’s also this really handy tool from Sociable.co. This allows you to set up an RSS feed for a username, Twitter list or keyword.

5. Archive your tweets. You can archive a hashtag or tweets sent from your account or another user’s account using Twapperkeeper. This is a particularly useful way if you want to search for a tweet you sent some months or even years ago.

6. Verify tweets. The HoverMe browser extension for Chrome is useful for verifying Twitter sources. Once installed and you hover over a Twitter profile photograph, you can see what other online accounts that user has and although not fool-proof, it will give you some idea of whether they are a real person with LinkedIn, YouTube and Delicious accounts and, helpfully, a Klout score, which measures online influence.

7. Here’s a tip for TweetDeck users who share the management of a Twitter account. One limitation of TweetDeck is the inability to be able to create a column of tweets sent from your account, something you can do in other applications such as HootSuite. The workaround is to set up a new Twitter account, follow the one (or more) account you manage and set up a TweetDeck column for “all friends”. This is our solution at Journalism.co.uk, where several people respond to tweets.

For this to work you must always use a character before the @ as tweets beginning @username can only be seen by people who follow you and that person.  For example, use .@joebloggs and not @joebloggs when writing tweets that begin with a username.

8. Have private, group chats by starting tweets with !b. New Twitter tool !blether allows you to start a group, private chat with people who follow you. After authenticating this tool you can use !b at the beginning for a tweet to begin a conversation. Useful for chats during conferences.

9. Monitor Twitter lists. How often do you make use of other people’s Twitter lists? Journalists seem to frequently overlook these existing lists where people have already done the legwork for you in terms of collating lists of useful people to follow. For example, a journalist following a story such as an uprising in an Arab country, a financial story or celebrity gossip can simply follow a list someone else has created.

Did you know that Journalism.co.uk has Twitter lists for UK regional journalists, UK broadcast journalists, UK press public relations, UK consumer journalists, etc? Send us a tweet if we have missed adding you to the correct list.

10. Familiarise yourself with how to read and send tweets via SMS. You never know when you might need to send or read a tweet via SMS. Even if you have a smartphone you may find yourself unable to use a 3G or WiFi signal. The number you need to save in your contacts is 86444 (for UK Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2 customers). (Other country codes are listed here.) The command you need to remember or to save is ON. Text ON to the above number and you will be able to follow the commands to receive and send tweets.

Helpful links:

• Twitter for newsrooms
• More tools for searching (Tweetsmarter blog)
• Five Twitter tips for journalists (Tweepi)
• Twitter tips for journalists (Steve Buttry)
• Twitter for journalists (Mashable – from 2009)
• Five cool Twitter search tricks (Makeuseof) 
• To share a Twitter tip with us leave a comment below or tweet @journalismnews.

Similar Posts:

• Tool of the week for journalists – Formulists (use it before it disappears)
• Tool of the week for journalists – WhenToTweet
• A guide to newspapers on Twitter
• Tool of the week for journalists – TimeKiwi, to create social media timelines
• App of the week for journalists: Tweetbot

The BBC College of Production produced a useful podcast earlier this month which looked at working in freelance in the television industry, asking how to find work, the “insecurity” of looking for the next job and also how to “balance the books”.

The podcast features interviews with freelance TV producer Barney Newman, freelance production manager Jude Winstanley and David Thomas, who owns a business which offers training in communication, broadcast and business skills.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

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When freelance journalist Nicholas Holmes wanted to upload and share examples of his work could not find the ideal platform – so he built one.

Cuttings.me, which was launched earlier this month, allows freelancers, journalists and trainees to create an online portfolio with a simple, clean and effective layout.

You get your own URL (cuttings.me/nicholasholmes, for example), can upload your own background image and select from a couple of different layouts. Holmes promises more customisation options will be available in the near future.

It takes just a few minutes to create a portfolio, complete with biography and links to your blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, and then you can start bringing in your cuttings by adding links or uploading PDFs.

You can see examples of journalists’ Cuttings.me profiles at cuttings.me/simonrobinson and cuttings.me/momtaz.

There is currently no index of users so although profiles are technically not private, no one will see your page unless they have the URL.

“It’s possible that in the future I will introduce a feature where I can browse other people’s profiles,” Holmes said, explaining that he would inform users before making changes.

Holmes, who is British but lives in Switzerland, is tourism editor at France-based leisure newswire AFP/Relaxnews “and a bit of a geek on the side”.

“As well as doing my day job for the newswire I am also pitching for freelance stuff,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

What I found is that I was always having to send different URL’s in emails. It all got a bit messy when I was trying to remember the best bits that I had done and found I had the need for a single place to put all of this stuff and wanted the ability to direct people to that single page.

There are lots of resources online where you can hook up your Twitter feed, your Facebook URL and your LinkedIn URL but there was nothing specifically designed for journalists and so I thought I’d have a bash at developing it.

Cuttings.me is now in public beta and Holmes is looking for feedback, which you can give by tweeting @cuttingsme.Similar Posts:

• LPA: Social media incentives for photographer members
• #followjourn: @arunsudhaman – Arun Sudhaman/managing editor
• The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 22-28 October
• Three ways to get a round-up of news shared by your contacts without checking Twitter
• US study finds 92% of B2B journalists use LinkedIn

Browser extensions for Google Chrome, add-ons for Firefox and Safari extensions can be very powerful and incredibly useful to journalists.

Here is a list of some that can help you find and search, verify sources and speed up picture annotation.

Some of the extensions in this list are our tips and the rest are suggestions submitted to us after we sent out a tweet asking for nominations.

1. HoverMe (Chrome)

Verifying Twitter sources can be testing. When this browser extension for Chrome is installed and you hover over a Twitter profile photograph, it will enable you to see what other online accounts that user has and although not fool-proof, will give you some idea of whether they are a real person with LinkedIn, YouTube and Delicious accounts and, helpfully, a Klout score, which measures online influence.

The downside is you have to use Twitter’s own website rather than a platform such as TweetDeck and it does depend on users using the same email address to link their various profiles.

2. Awesome Screenshot (Chrome and Firefox)

An incredibly useful Chrome and Firefox extension for online journalists who spend time annotating screengrabs in Photoshop and other graphics packages.

First you click the button on your browser to take a screen shot and then you can crop the image, circle or blur an area and save it.

3. Greplin (Chrome)

Greplin is an incredibly useful tool and has a handy browser extension which allows you to search your own private files from Chrome. It’s like Google for your email, calendar, Dropbox and Delicious. After you have signed up to Greplin and added the extension you can then type ‘g’ in the url field and search for a keyword or phrase and find references to it from your Gmail, Facebook and Dropbox accounts, plus in several other platforms.

4. Delicious (Firefox, Chrome, Safari)

Delicious has various add-ons to help users of the bookmarking platform. You can post a URL directly to Delicious and see your tags to allow you to easily find archived bookmarks.

Tipster: @the_claus

5. British English Dictionary (Firefox)

If your CMS, such as WordPress, has a default US spelling setting, this is one way of switching it to British English. Install the add-on, select several rows of text, right-click and change the language.

6. Firebug (Firefox)

This is a handy extension for journalists to “edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page”. By clicking on the installed add-on, you will be given a screen which shows you the code. Handy for spotting bugs.

7. Zotero (Chrome and Safari)

Zotero is a tool to help you collect, organise, cite, and share your research sources. Click on the add-on and you can file any web page into your Zotero library and manually add additional notes and information. There is a video here that explains how Zotero works.

Tipster: @onlinejourno

8. ScribeFire (Chrome and Safari)

ScribeFire allows you to blog from your browser, without opening the CMS or platform. You can post to platforms including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Tumblr, Posterous, Xanga, and LiveJournal.

You can edit and update existing posts and also schedule posts for the future (if your blog allows that). You can also delete posts, save drafts, tag, categorize and upload images, and post to multiple blogs at once.

Tipster: @onlinejourno

9. WikiTrust (Safari and Firefox)

Journalism students are no-doubt told never to rely on information form Wikipedia. This handy add-on goes some way to help you understand the online reputation of authors and content, however. Click the installed tab (within Wikipedia) and the intensity of the colour highlighting the text will tell you the degree to which it has been revised by high-reputation authors.

An orange background indicates new, unrevised, text, white is for text that has been revised by many reputed authors.

Tipster: @the_claus

10. Greasemonkey (Firefox)

This Firefox add-on allows you to  “customise the way a web page displays or behaves, by using small bits of JavaScript”. For example, use other people’s code to do things like remove the Facebook side ticker.

Journalist Mary Hamilton, who recommended the add-on said she uses it to automate really simple tasks and auto-refresh web pages.

Tipster: @newsmarySimilar Posts:

• Tool of the week for journalists – Greplin, to search your private files and profiles
• Q&A: New ways of reading the news with Chrome extensions
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – reporting tools shared at #jiconf
• Ten free apps in the Chrome web store that journalists should know about
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk

If this then that – or ifttt – is a tool that allows you to connect various other tools together to create rules or tasks. It allows you to connect 17 channels, including SMS, Facebook, WordPress and Dropbox, offering 1040 possible task combinations.

The most popular ‘recipe’, a task designed and shared by others, will give you an idea of how ifttt works. This recipe allows you to connect your Facebook and Dropbox accounts so that when someone tags you in a photo on Facebook, the photo will be added to your Dropbox folder (cloud storage allowing you to access your files on different devices).

Here are ten ifttt recipes for journalists:

1. When you receive an email from a key contact or your editor, you receive an SMS

You no doubt receive scores of emails but there are some senders that are more important to hear from than others. This recipe allows you to set up a key contact, such as a source or your editor, and receive a SMS whenever that person emails you.

2. When you post a link to Delicious, add to Dropbox

If you use Delicious to bookmark interesting stories, this recipe allows you to also save the links to Dropbox. For example, I am interested in new smartphone apps so have set up a connection so that any Delicious bookmark that I tag “app” is posted to a folder in my Dropbox account.

3. Post Google+ posts to your Facebook page

Google+ adds additional responsibility for anyone in the newsroom tasked with managing social media.

It is widely recognised that non-automated posts are best when it comes to Facebook and Google+. This recipe allows you to write a link post in Google+ and automatically post the link to your site’s Facebook page. You can also create a rule to post status updates.

To do this you need to set up an RSS feed of your Google+ account. Copy your Google+ ID, which is the long number in the URL of your Google+ profile, and paste it on the end of http://plu.sr/feed.php?plusr=. My Google+ feed is therefore http://plu.sr/feed.php?plusr=107031542976965456407, for example.

4. Create an Evernote every time you star an item in Google Reader

If you use Google Reader as your RSS feed reader and want a quick way of saving key articles to Evernote, this is a solution.

5. Post to Instapaper (or Read It Later) every time you star an article in Google Reader

If you use Instapaper to read articles later this is a quick way of posting from Google Reader.

6. Post a ‘favourite’ tweet (with links) to Instapaper (or Dropbox or Evernote)

When you come across a tweet with a link and want to save it for later you may well click star to make it a favourite. This recipe allows you to save those favourite tweets and post the linked articles to Instapaper. Alternatively, you can also set this up to save to Dropbox of Evernote.

7. Add favourite Flickr photos to Dropbox

If you post stories you write online, you may well use Flickr images with creative commons licences. Flickr allows you to indicate favourite images that you come across and may want to use at a later date. This recipe saves those images to Dropbox. Alternatively, you can set this up to save favourites to Evernote.

8. Send me an email (or SMS) to remind me about a daily meeting, weekly or monthly task.

If you have a daily or weekly meeting or task to carry out, ifttt can enable you to create reminder.

9. Send me an email (or SMS) every time a certain person tweets

Twitter is a great source for journalists but it is easy to miss a tweet from a key contact. Perhaps the key source is a person or company that only occasionally tweets and when they do you want to be alerted immediately. This recipe allows you to receive an email when an individual tweets. You can also set a rule to receive an SMS.

10. Send me an email every time a keyword is mentioned in an RSS feed

This is a recipe I suggested in a recent Journalism.co.uk tip of the day. It is a way you can set up an alert when a keyword is mentioned by a particular news provider.

If you are a journalist and have a favourite ifttt recipe, share it in the comments session below.Similar Posts:

• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – use ‘if this then that’ for story alerts
• App of the week for journalists: Evernote – A must-have app ‘like having a second brain’
• Tool of the week for journalists – Spool, an Instapaper for video
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – efficiency tools for journalists
• Tool of the week for journalists – ifttt, a promising app for dealing with data

If you are one of those people who has dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent, this week’s #jpod is for you.

Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Tim Butcher, a former Telegraph foreign correspondent who is now a renowned author of books detailing journeys in Africa, and Ruud Elmendorp, a video journalist who has been roaming Africa with his camera for almost a decade.

You can find out more about books by Tim Butcher and watch Ruud Elmendorp’s video reports here.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

 Similar Posts:

• #jpod: How Apple’s Newsstand is revolutionising the publishing industry
• #jpod: How journalists are embracing Facebook subscribe
• #jpod: A guide to using numbers in journalism
• #jpod: Broadcasters reflect on the challenges of 2011
• #jpod – SoLoMo: a look at the Guardian and Northcliffe’s innovations in social and local

If you’re trying to establish yourself as a freelance journalist, Leon Brown, a freelance developer and tutor who has taken the step and started pitching and writing articles for magazines about internet technologies has the following eight tips:

1. Use your website to list ideas for articles you want to write then use social media like Twitter and LinkedIn to target decision makers who will want to hire you;
2. You could allow buyers to select article components. I’m creating something like this on my website, allowing magazine editors and other types of buyers to select them and add them to a shopping cart;
3. Engage in discussions that decision makers are involved in;
4. When you post a comment on LinkedIn, most people involved in the discussion will get an email making them aware of your comment;
5. If you are contributing informative points to a discussion, it helps people perceive you as knowledgeable which enhances your personal brand;
6. Engage with decision makers’ own content. For example, I’m speaking to .Net magazine about writing an article for them which came about after I commented on a blog post. The strategy was to take something that’s already of interest to them and propose something new from it.
7. Suggest writing content that has an interesting twist on current events. For example, I’ve did this when pitching my two most recent articles. The first was when LulzSec hacked Sony. I proposed to Web Designer Magazine to write an article about how website hacking works and how to build code to protect against it. .Net magazine was interested when I suggested writing an article containing advice for people working in the web industry who have been made redundant. That was promoted by the current economic uncertainty.
8. Build you followers. If you have a fan base, then this becomes an asset when getting decision makers to hire you because this also allows them to make more sales of their publication to your audience.

Tipster: Leon Brown

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

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A study by US company Arketi Group has found 92 per cent of journalists writing for B2B publications use LinkedIn, 85 per cent of journalists are on Facebook, 84 per cent use Twitter.

Out of the journalists surveyed, 58 per cent have a YouTube account, 49 per cent have a blog, 28 per cent use Flickr, 20 per cent use Digg, 18 per cent have a MySpace account, 15 per cent use Delicious and 14 per cent use Foursquare, according to this report.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has published advice on its blog for freelancers and those who juggle journalism careers with other jobs.

For example, a freelance or part-time journalist may also be a yoga tutor and have to decide whether or not to include details of both careers in a LinkedIn profile.

Your first decision is whether you want to feature both careers on your LinkedIn profile. If you think it might be puzzling or even damaging to one of your jobs to feature both on your profile, then simply leave off your other employment. There is no rule that you have to show everything you do on LinkedIn.

If, on the other hand, you want to promote both of your jobs or careers, here are two ways to do that effectively:

• Embrace the slash mark: Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers, coined the term “slash careerist” or “slasher” to refer to individuals who can’t answer “what do you do?” with a single word or phrase. If you’re perfectly comfortable being a tech salesperson/photographer or a lawyer/SAT tutor, then proudly display this as your LinkedIn headline.

You’ll also want to list both of these positions as your current employment in your profile. The way to include more than one job as current is to put the end dates of both jobs as “present”. Note that whichever role began more recently will be displayed first.

• If, instead, you want to highlight one of your jobs more prominently (e.g., because you’re hoping to land a new job in that field or believe you’ll have more networking opportunities related to that role), then I recommend writing a profile headline featuring that role exclusively and listing it as your only current position.

The LinkedIn blog post aso has advice from freelancers who are seeking a full-time position.

Here is a Journalism.co.uk podcast on how journalists can best use LinkedIn

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Tool of the week: Duedil

What is it? Duedil is a website which launched in April 2010 and allows you to access company stats and figures for free. Gigaom described it as “Lexis-Nexis-meets-Google-meets-LinkedIn”.

It’s still in beta but is a kind of social network for company information; transparent data available on a site with an intuitive user interface.

You can, of course, access the information via Companies House (for a £1-a-report-fee) but what Duedil does really well is allow you to explore and drill down.

Graphs, charts and timelines present current stock information, the number of employees and opinions on the firm, including tweets.

How is it of use to journalists?

Whatever your area of journalism – from fashion to politics to local newspapers – you no doubt have to keep an eye on the finances, details of directors and employee numbers of companies within your field of expertise.

What’s really nice is that if you log in with your LinkedIn profile, it automatically suggests companies you might be interested in.

Even if you never use Duedil for journalistic research, it’s worth exploring and curiously addictive once you start browsing.

Here’s an example: Journalism.co.uk is interested in following newspaper groups, media organisations and tech companies.

Let’s take News International Publishers Ltd. You can click to see various details.

For example, you can click on the financials for various years.

You can then look at the list of directors and find James Murdoch’s current and past positions presented on a timeline.

Now click on the group graph and see the family of related companies.

Here’s another example, this time for Johnston Press. Here you can see the stock information, number of employees:

Under the “opinions” heading, you can also see the tweets that comment on JP.

It is worth checking and data you access from Duedil (you can report bad data if you come across it and receive £5 as part of its guarantee).

Simply by following companies on Duedil – in the way you would follow people in a social network – you may well come across data to inspire further investigation or information that reveals a connection.Similar Posts:

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Kapost, a new site for web publishers, is about to launch a mechanism for paying journalists a bonus if their articles clock up a certain number of web hits, retweets or Facebook ‘likes’.

What is Kapost?

Kapost is an online system for web publishers to manage all areas of production.

It works in conjunction with a site’s own CMS, such as WordPress, and allows freelancers to pitch story ideas and get paid in a single click via PayPal. An invoicing service is coming soon.

There is a calendar for managing workflows and a CMS for any publisher that does not want to use their existing system.

Editors can drill down to view the performance of stories by author, on a categorised topic (such as health or education), or by individual story and analyse the traffic generated. Organisations can then opt to pay reporters an additional bonus for popular stories.

Grace Boyle from Kapost spoke to Journalism.co.uk from the company’s base in Colorado:

We don’t want to replace Google Analytics but we are taking the most important analytics metrics and we show which of your contributors are giving you the most traffic.

She added that Kapost’s aim is to reduce the amount of administrative duties required of editors.

Kapost is free for organisations with three people or less; it is $8 per user per month for larger organisations.

To see a demo of Kapost, click on the video below.

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