Freelance advice

flogen

I wanted to set up this thread for people who need advice in getting into freelancing, how to get known, how to go about getting a commission and what the best way of pushing a story would be.

In all honesty it's something I want to try and get to know more about, and get into the practice of over time. Obviously it pays to have good contacts and find a good story, but I never really know who to approach with a feature idea or what to do if I've found a news story that I don't think a certain newspaper would have found themselves.

So, from the seasoned reporters here or those that have dabbled in freelancing and feature writing, what advice would you give and how best would you approach someone when looking for a commission? Are some papers more open to commissioning than others? I noticed The Guardian has a great freelance charter on their site (here), would it be something to use as a rule of thumb everywhere else?

Misumi

Hi there,
re contacts: Get the Media Contacts Directory, I think the 2006 one is out now. In it, it lists all the editors of the nationals, regionals, magazines, publishing agencies etc… (ie news editor, features, fashion, sport, gaming, business, entertainment and so on…) and their contact details. Even if there’s no work initially, your could be on their books if something comes up...

Best approach, contact the mags, papers and editors in an area that is of interest to you or that you specialise in, be it news, sport, fashion, gaming etc....When contacting editors, have a list of story ideas and specs...
The last thing you want to do is do a feature on something you no nothing about, mess it up and then get a bad rep + no work!

Best for freelance is the Indo, with its three titles, the Times is good aswell, along with the Sundays … The trend now is for newspapers to have a core team and then outsourcing a lot; this works in all areas nowadays,eg editorial, subbing and design… By warned though January is always a quiet quarter, so budgets might be cutback, but overall once you’ve made the contacts + proved your worth, freelancing’s grand, it’s calculating your tax at the end of year that’s the problem ……or sometimes not!
best of luck!

santosubito

Also, you have to realise and accept that if you're a freelancer who is looking to get a contract, you can't say no.
If you're unavailable one day, they'll just get someone else and forget about you.
A hard fact, but true nevertheless.