Live blog: Becoming a successful freelance journalist
As the news industry continues to shed jobs, freelancing skills have never been more important for prospective journalists. So, what makes a good freelancer? How do you sell your work to different markets, including foreign media? What role does social media play in a freelancer’s career? We get the answers from two freelance journalists: Matt Braga, a former National Post technology reporter, and Andrew Livingstone, a former Toronto Star reporter. Join host Brennan Reid, a Wilfrid Laurier University journalism student, on Thursday, March 27 at 1 p.m. ET for this live chat. Tweet your questions for Braga and Livingstone using #FreelanceChat.
Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.
March 27, 2014
Hello
Hello
March 27, 2014
When I lived in Vancouver, I
When I lived in Vancouver, I left a regional business publication there and began to freelance after about five years of working for newspapers.
That first year, my income doubled. Freelance business came to me very easily because I was in a major city where I had acquired a bit of a reputation for writing and editing as a staff journalist.
Now, I'm in a very small city in northern New Brunswick with no major media outlets within hours and where the number of moose is perhaps more significant than the number of people.
How can I freelance successfully from a small city in the hinterland?