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:
An update from Press Gazette on the libel fight of freelance journalist Hardeep Singh, which reports that the freelancer is being represented by high-profile law firm Carter-Ruck – better known for its work elsewhere…
Singh was sued by His Holiness Sant Baba Jeet Singh ji Maharaj, the head of a fringe Sikh religious institution, for an article published in the Sikh Times in 2007. The piece written by Singh called Jeet Singh “an accused cult leader” and alleged that his teachings were not in line with mainstream Sikh doctrine.
The case was thrown out by Justice Eady in May 2010, who ruled for a permanent stay with no right to appeal. In May Singh said the case had already cost him “in excess of £90,000”.
Industry groups in Italy are calling on the country’s government and ministry of work to fix minimum standards for the treatment and pay of freelance journalists, according to the website of Liberta di Stampa Diritto all’Informazione (LSDI).
It is absolutely unacceptable that independent work is paid with compensation so low that the vast majority of freelance journalists declare an average annual income that is lower than the poverty threshold indicated by ISTAT [the Italian statistics institute].
LSDI has also written and published an ebook on the working conditions for journalists in Italy.
Freelance journalist Jessanne Collins on what it’s like to work as a copy editor for Demand Media’s websites:
I was to be an intermediary between the web at large and the raw, reliably weird substance that results from the unlikely union of algorithmically created topic assignments and writers of, shall we say, widely variable competence. The actual nuts and bolts of style consistency and tone were part of it, of course. But they seemed to be peripheral to what I was actually being asked to do, which was to quality-check each piece of content according to a set of generic yet meticulously detailed standards. It fell on my shoulders to ensure not just that no dangling modifiers marred any directories of Jacuzzi-having hotels, but that the piece wasn’t plagiarised, written off the top of some Jacuzzi-having hotel aficionado’s head, based on obvious or non-information, referencing other websites, or plagued by any of the other myriad atrocities that web content can be subject to these days.
An honest and amusing assessment of working as a freelance journalist, from US-based writer Richard Morgan, who looks at the problems of pitching, protecting your ideas and dealing with editors.
He (half-) jokes: “Freelancing means your editor will reject your pitch and then, seven months later, run the story you pitched – with the same language as your pitch – and then have it submitted for a National Magazine Award.”
But on a more serious note:
Freelancing isn’t just about finding good stories. It is also – more so? – about finding good editors. I have solid relationships with four, which, over a seven-year span, works out to encountering one good editor for every 21 months. Maybe I sound as silly and vain and vacuous as Jessica Simpson talking about her very real struggle with acne and how Pro-Activ Solution helped her, but journalism is built upon the values of truth and transparency and intellectual service and candour – of sunshine being the best disinfectant.