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.
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