Monday, June 17, 2013

How to make freelance journalism possible

Josh Stearns | www.freepress.net/
17 June 2013


Last month the Chicago Sun Times fired its entire staff of photographers  -– 28 full-time journalists — and plans to rely primarily on freelancers. This news is just the most recent in a growing trend across the news industry, which is relying more than ever before on independent journalists and freelancers. However, despite all the debate about the future of journalism, not enough has been said about how we can better support freelance journalists and how best to adapt to a media landscape in which so many people are operating without the resources and backing of newsrooms.

On Twitter, I asked freelancers to tell me what the future of journalism looks like to them. This is the first post in a series where I’ll look at some of their responses. While people come to freelancing for a range of reasons, some by choice, some not, I found a few key themes in the responses I got.

But before I get to those responses, some background on the major research done recently, and the conspicuous absence of freelancers.

According to the most recent statistics from the Pew State of the News Media 2013, the U.S. has lost roughly 30% of its journalism workforce since 2000. While I wasn’t able to find concrete data on the rise of freelancers, anecdotal evidence suggests a major shift in the industry. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that they are increasingly handling cases for independent and freelance journalists; the Society for Environmental Journalists recently told the Federal Communications Commission that it has seen a spike in membership from people identifying as freelancers; and both the Daily Beast and Columbia Journalism Review have reported on the increase of freelancers reporting from conflict zones abroad in the last year.

READ IT ALL:

No comments: