A letter to my local journalism club about the need to support freelance journalism

This is a letter to my local press club about the need to support freelance journalism more. I'm posting it here as a way to highlight the struggles of people who freelance for a living

 

I am a first-year member at the NPC who arrived here a year after the freelance committee dissolved. From what I know, this is because  freelancers found it easier to network with people in specific fields.That makes sense: I don't think networking is particularly important since most of us can do that anyway by meeting people at the bar or taco night.

I am not a member of any committees so I cannot speak from experience as to what they do and don't do, but I did see on the broadcast/podcast committee, one of its functions is to "provide a forum for members interested in multimedia....." Bingo! As a freelancer, a "forum" of some sort whether in a committee or not, is  very much what I need and I believe other freelancers could benefit from this as well as journalism itself. NPC President Andrea Edney said, in a news release, "I believe this is a crucial time for the Club to help strengthen journalism and its role in our country. In addition to the important press freedom efforts we have underway, I plan to work with our National Press Club Journalism Institute on professional development in areas such as investigative reporting and advance serious discussion on topics like the importance of objectivity in journalism."

To the degree that freelancers fill an important need, there aren't the support systems anymore for freelancers to make a living wage carrying out the missions that Edney holds important such as press integrity and the quality of journalism. I speak as a freelancer who has published continuously since 2010 in over two dozen publications including the Washington Post, Mental Floss Magazine, Northern Virginia Magazine, Gothamist, Richmond Times-Dispatch and Richmond Style Weekly,  At the outlet that I've done the most work for the past 18 months. I recently met with an editor who revealed his salary was $33,000 a year but he needed me to make the newspaper complete and that it would be some degree of trouble for him to find a freelancer to replace me. If we're both crucial to the newspaper, that's not reflected in the difference in our pay. Additionally, I've experienced everything from late payments, to being thrown under the bus by editors, to horrific editing, to articles being killed midway through because of editors changing their minds with little more than a "thank you for your time, I appreciate your efforts on this" but no monetary appreciation. I suspect I'm not alone.

I have a friend who exposed the difficulties of Mexican deportation by doing a multi-day feature below the border and she wasn't even sure she'd be reimbursed for her hotel room and had to fight tooth and neck to make sure the story was published so she wouldn't go bankrupt on it. As I was writing this e-mail, I texted her and she's currently on the Texas border doing research without health insurance. Another acquaintance I've made at the NPC hasn't made a penny for the last month because he's getting back into freelancing and is simply developing stories. If this were Hollywood, he would get signed to a development deal that would allow for financial security during that period.

Personally, I can attest to the importance of freelancers because. I wanted to start upon graduating college around '06-'07 but it wasn't until the Connection Newspapers started laying off their reporters and had holes in their coverage in 2010 that I got my foot in the door. Freelancing was a great option for me because if I were to go immediately to writing 4-5 stories a week, I would have failed and burned out quickly. 

As the growing literature on the topic and the growth of the freelancer's union has established, the gig economy is not a fad but what now comprises 20% of the workforce and it has enormous benefits to both the industry itself (i.e. Connection Newspapers in 2010) and the workers. I read a quote nearly a decade ago from one of the perspective candidates for Secretary of Labor in Time Magazine who said that our perceptions of what it means to be a worker in the America is massively different in the 21st century than the typical 9-to-5 model and that it would take a while for institutions to catch up with it. I'd like to humbly suggest that the NPC rise up to be one of those institutions that embraces this transition rather than get left behind as this industry has such a porous line between freelance and regular work.  
I don't know if anyone on the board has ever had one of those condescending conversations with a rich friend in an industry like banking or business consulting ask you "why are you doing this as opposed to a real job?" I once interviewed American U's journalist-in-residence who told me that journalism isn't always respected even when it's done well. That goes doubly for freelance journalists where people (including fellow journalists) who treat the occupation of freelancer, for example, as an acceptable purgatory while waiting for a staff job. Conversely, it's also easy to look to the small handful of freelancers who have found their golden goose and think that's the norm, which subsequently erases the struggles that are pervasive in freelancing life (instability, lack of insurance, being the first to be affected by job turnover at editorial), the issues are much more complicated as I hope NPC can address. .

Issues such a forum/committee could address:

1 What is the value of freelancers? How do we negotiate our worth? How do we emphasize our worth?

2 What obligations do we have to newspapers outside of what we write for them?  Should we have to police ourselves on twitter or submit articles one at a time as opposed to single submission clauses? What are other best practices?

3. What's the state of the market and how can we best cope with those changes?

4. Do we have the same access as freelancers?
5. How can we expand our scope of publications?

6. What's the best thing to do with killed pieces and unused work?

7. To blog or not to blog...

8. What risks do we take on as freelancers?

9. The freelancers union and access to health insurance?

10. Is freelancing sustainable

That's off the top of my head. The list could go on and on.......I don't need a leadership role in new committee but I'd like to argue it's need.

Sincerely,

Orrin Konheim