The Threatened Value of Freelancers in Journalism

From October of 2010 to the present, I have been a continually published professional freelancer. In that time, I have been blackmailed by sources who threatened to go over my head; I have had rich and/or semi-famous people screw me over by cancelling interviews at a moment’s notice; I’ve had publicity agents go over my head to get more favorable coverage (hanging me out to dry); I had an editor (Mary Kim at Connection Newspapers, it’s been 11 years, why not say it out loud? You’re welcome, Mary) who fired me when I reported out that a colleague was being paid less than me for equivalent work (which is illegal). I’ve also had non-payment issues and I even still work for one of the people who withheld payment from me because I like journalism too much to not write for her when she asks.

And I have zero protection as a freelancer from anyone spontaneously deciding not to use me anymore. The bottom line is that journalism is both the best and worst profession in the world. I’ve experienced some great adventures and rarely am I ever bored.

But my life as a journalist could certainly be better if we were unionized and protections.

Even more importantly, journalism needs freelancers to fill in much-needed gaps in their coverage. Without freelancers, newsrooms are at the mercy of the sum total of their reporters’ experiences and the newswire.

The newswire (so-called because it used to come off a telegram wire) is news that is often fed to the news media by…