The Future Is Freelance: How to Survive and Thrive, Whether You're a Journalist or a Publisher
3:00PM Aug 26, 2023
Speakers:
Keywords:
freelancers
editor
people
pitch
freelance
talk
publishers
work
publication
years
contract
pay
story
write
journalists
journalism
red flags
clients
question
rights
Hey This presentation first of all, you want to skip this slide just turn it off. And so the way I have it set up is this will be online and this will be live and we're doing an audio recording. Okay, so if you're talking, make sure you use one
of these and if somebody asks a question and you can reiterate it, just so it catches after check to us, maybe two of us, okay. So I'll leave. I'll actually leave this three open. Okay, and then I'll make the younger three just so there's no Thank you much.
Good to see you again. Oh, no problem at all.
So what I've been told is that these two mics are on that mic is this microphone? Okay.
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Encourage people to move. Hey, everybody, can you hear me? Good to see you. Well, feel free to move up. It'd be want. Seems like it's an intimate setting here. So today talking about the future of freelance whether you're a freelancer, editor, publisher or anything else. And I'm Matt.
I'm Katherine. We're gonna moderate each other and hopefully this can just be a very intimate conversation where we address the questions you all have in the room.
Can I right before we get into our introductions, can I try to figure out who's in the room? If you're a freelancer, can you raise your hand? Okay, great. someone's thinking about it. How about editor? Okay, are there any publishers? All right. So we can talk all the shit we want. No one will find out.
Can is the volume good for everyone? It seems like it's really a live space. So I'm thrilled to be here. After waking up at 620 this morning with the Marriott alarm. And really excited to be here with Matt think home. Yeah, who is the founder of the hard times a music satire website, as well as hard drive focused on video game culture. He is a former journalist although I like to say once a journalist always a journalist. And this he's a CEO of out voice whose mission is to fix how freelancers get paid, and which you may have heard recently purchased study hall. anyone here heard of study hall? We love it. I use it all the time. An online community for media workers with forums advice, lots of directories. And previously he was the music editor of SF weekly and wrote for Vice Rollingstone many other publications and fun fact, for Motorhead fans in the audience. He was one of the last people to interview let me before he passed.
Thanks. So Catherine here who I've had a great time getting to know over the last couple days by the way. She's the founder of the Institute of independent journalist whose mission is the financial and emotional sustainability of freelancers of color. She's an award winning science journalist. Covering children behavioral and mental health, education, race, gender, disability equity in journalism and media careers for The Atlantic fortune Neiman reports, New York Times on dark and the Washington Post. I'd love for you to get into getting your first byline at the New York Times was kind of like one of my bucket list things there. Yeah. Her book. The good news about bad behavior grew out of the Mother Jones most read story. She's also a Harvard physics graduate. No big deal. Just throw that one out. And she's the former national correspondent for new house and Bloomberg News. Fun fact is she sings acapella jazz and she met her husband in that group.
Husband aka tech support. Thank you for being here, Brian. And yeah, I sometimes people say well, what now that you're a journalist, what do you use your Harvard physics degree for? And I always say to impress people because it's excellent. For that purpose. It worked on me. So
can I ask you a quick question? Alright, so how long have you been freelancing for?
I have been a full time freelancer for 15 years. Okay since November 10 2008.
So I tried to be a full time freelancer. I made it like seven or eight months. So I'm curious. How do you make it longer than seven or eight months? What how do you go 15 years because it's very impressive.
Oh, thank you. Well, I've made a lot of mistakes. I went into it because of a layoff. I was a national correspondent for New House news service. And in this over the summer of 2008, my boss started walking around the newsroom loudly saying we all need a plan B when we're in journalism. So I was like, Hmm, maybe I should freelance on the side. So I would say you know, July, maybe even June, from June to November, I ramped up my freelance practice. And so I launched with, you know, three clients, and I always tell people if you have three clients, you have a business because one, maybe someone taking pity on you to is your grandma, but three means you're selling a product or service that someone is interested in paying for. And then from November for that first year, I had severance. So I had a severance package that was about 12 weeks. I was on unemployment. So you have a little bit of runway. Yeah. So I had I would say I probably had nine months of runway. Okay. That's important. Yeah. And so by the time I set my severance and the unemployment had run out, I was starting to get a decent cash flow from those first assignments I had done
in the fall. Do you think that you still had three clients around that or had a grown?
No, I had definitely about 10 by that. Okay. So and it was also the good thing. Does anyone remember November 2008. There was something great going on, but it was not good. It was a great recession. And for a financial journalist being in Washington DC in a recession. It's actually kind of good news because I was writing about the recession and what the financial regulators were doing. So I would write the same story for the fiscal times and for bank rate with a slightly different quotes slightly different angle, but same basic understanding and then also for like, Financial Planning magazine. So I was able to develop a beat expertise and reuse some of the same ideas for different clients, and there was just a lot of demand. But that first year, I would say I made about, you know, $35,000, which was about a third, more than a third but not enough to live in Washington, DC with up to 10 plus years experience as a journalist. The second year, I made more and by the third year, I had matched my salary at New House Newser rich, which was like 88 90,000 Very cool. Yeah. And so the first I'll just have like four stages of my career as a freelancer because I started off just like, I need to make a living, right. I need to pay my kids were in daycare I needed to pay for the mortgage. Obviously, having a partner who had health insurance helped me in that first year. And then and then the next phase was okay, I can make a living at this. What do I really want to do? And that's when I sort of shifted to writing more about kids mental and behavioral health and I really wanted to write a book. So I started looking for, like big stories that might end up in a book. Okay, yeah.
So I have a couple more questions just because I'm, I didn't get that far. You know what I mean? And I'm curious when you did get to truly replacing your previous w two income. Do you feel like you had a better or worse work life balance as a freelancer than you did as a full timer?
I definitely had a better work life balance. Yeah. And that's the other piece of advice. I give is know your why. Right? My kids were like two and four at the time. So I really didn't want to be in an all in Washington DC newsroom working 60 hours a week. And so I tried to aim really higher with my hourly rate, so that I could work more flexibly and work less. And generally right now, I would say the last eight years or so I've worked probably 3035 hours a week when I'm not writing a book launching a new organization, or like these big projects, but my regular freelance practice is pretty low key okay. I think,
you know, we're getting to your book. I have a question there too, which was, I noticed in the in the bio, it talks about you writing a book based on a story. So when you were freelancer, did you write that story? Yes. And did you sign any intellectual property agreement before you wrote that story?
I did. And because it was Mother Jones, they have a very writer friendly contract. So it left me with all derivative rights. And in fact, I was so happy to get this story place that I forgot to ask for expenses, because I had already spent, you know, three months reporting and writing the story. And I flew out to Maine and spent time with the subjects. And I did I was just so excited. They were gonna run it. And then I emailed the editor and said, Oh, by the way, I spent $800 on travel and expenses, and she said sure, so they're an amazing publication to work for. If only they published more than 10 times a year, and I think they take like one or two freelance stories per issue, but I love Mother Jones. And actually, we were just talking before this started. Oh, ma has a terrible speakers contract. If anyone has spoken here, I hope you read your contract because they asked you to sign away all your IP rights.
Probably next year. There'll be two AI versions of up here giving the same talk.
That's we have no slides because I did not want to make them the property of OMA but definitely take a you know on our website that i j's website, we have lots of resources and spreadsheets and templates and stuff like
so I want to get to the AI too, because I'm super interested about that. But first for the freelancers in the crowd. Would you recommend talking to your editor about the intellectual property agreement? Do you think there's flexibility there I've always felt when I was a freelancer, that there was this really intense power dynamic, where my editor was always busy. I didn't want to bother them too much. But what would you say if you're freelancing, or should you bring it up?
Always read your contract and always look for the two key clauses, right? What is the right what are the rights that you're either assigning or licensing you don't want to assign a work for hire contract. You don't want to assign all your rights. And the other red flag is the indemnity clause. So who here is familiar with both of these clauses or either, so I don't want to go too much into it, but those are the two red flags. And I always bring it up with my editor. If I see either of those. And I'll say I don't sign either. You know, these two are red flags for me, is their flag. What flexibility do you have,
actually your percentages of getting some wiggle room?
Um, I would say probably 80% of the time, and once I was worth writing for a major publisher whose name rhymes with mime, and they gave me a contract, that was terrible. And I asked my editor, you know, I can't sign away on my rights. I can't do work for hire. And he said, Oh, I'll get you the other contract. Oh, so they had a second more writer friendly contract. Just waiting for the people who knew enough to ask for it. Yeah. And and there are times when I don't like Kiplinger retirement report I write for and they have a work for hire contract, because they like the syndicate. So my stories will end up in other publications, but they pay me well enough and they tend not to be subjects that I think I'm going to want to turn into a book. So I made the intentional decision. Okay, for this reason, for this publication, I'm willing to give away more of my rights. Hmm,
interesting. Yeah. So okay, can you tell me a little bit about the IJ I think you started about a year ago and we spoke a little bit at lunch. yesterday about it, but just tell us, what was your inspiration for starting it? And what's your mission?
Yeah, so I had written this book that I was so proud of, in 2018. And then in 2019, half of my money was coming from speaking gigs. So presenting to 200 400 parents in a crowded ballroom. So in March 2020, my gigs canceled. Nobody was hiring me to come speak in person. So I needed to find another path and I really wanted to stay in journalism. I started meeting on zoom with my closest colleagues whose work I really admire other long form, narrative journalists. And even though I had been doing this for at that time, like 12 years, every meeting, I found a new solution to something I was wrestling with, or I got advice that I should have had earlier. And I realized in the community of freelancers, we have so much wisdom, and we need to be sharing it and pooling it. And so from we started experimenting with different versions of how do we pull and share that wisdom, and eventually decided to launch the Institute for independent journalists in August. Our websites, the i j.com, and we have free webinars and we do an annual conference that we try to make really affordable, and we started doing in person workshops. So it's first of all, I'm an extrovert. So it was what I needed during the pandemic to not really struggle. I was really struggling with my mental health. So it helped me and it was also the thing I wanted in the world.
Right. Well, I love independent journalist meetup some of the some of the best times in my career were when my editor at SF weekly when I was a freelancer would get all the music writers together and we'd all go to a bar and just talk about music all night. So,
yeah, journalists are the best. And I'd love to hear from you, Matt, you know, so we're hoping to just make this a structured conversation. And then, after about 20 minutes of interviewing each other, we'll let you all jump in. What what are you hearing from publishers sort of in this climate? I see a lot of big announcements like National Geographic is only going to use freelancers. But what is the you know, the attitude right now towards freelancers? And what are you hearing?
Yeah, so it's pretty varied. So something that i i When I was a freelancer, I thought it was basically morally wrong, how long it took publications to pay freelancers. And so when I had my own publication, I thought, I want to pay people with the same click of a button that publishes the work, and that actually didn't exist. And so I found my co founder ISA and that's when we started out voice and we started working on that, through that process and journey. I've been working with all these different publishers, so I do see how they talk about treat and strategize around freelancers. The thing that I see is, I feel like the economics of the internet is dictating more and more freelancers in every newsroom. Even people who kind of held out for a while. There used to be 30 full timers. Now there's seven full timers and a bunch of freelancers. I have seen there's this interesting dynamic with publishers where they're embarrassed about their rates. That's a very interesting thing to see. And they don't want their rates to be public. And the Freelancers want the rates to be public. I've seen that as a as a thing that's been getting worse and worse. I think as the economics of the internet and advertising rates have been going down. Publishers can only pay so much, and they're embarrassed and they don't want to say how much it is. So that's been one dynamic that I've seen. Another dynamic that I've seen is an interesting amount of as bad as it gets out there. Once people move over to a more freelance heavy model, I don't see them moving off of it. Very often at all. So you know, we've been doing outputs for quite some while and I can see how much the publishers are spending. I can see how many freelancers they use, and it doesn't turn down. And that's interesting because it's this is wild. People go through these layoffs and these cutbacks and freelance seems to be something many publishers hold on to, almost until the bitter end. And sadly, I think we were just talking to someone at our at our get together who said they're still waiting for a check from Vice because they were still hiring freelancers and doing that whole process up until they went bankrupt, and they never paid off the check. Yeah, so
yeah, and when you sort of look at the range of practices, you know, obviously not paying people is not good. Um, what what do you see as some of the emerging best practices that you know, publishers and assigning editors should aspire to? And what are some of the ones that are red flags for us?
Well, I've been encouraged a little bit because when I started out voice, I kind of naively thought that people would be interested in paying their freelancers quickly and that if you made it super simple for them, that more people would want to. I've been encouraged that that was true some of the time and we got these partners who take pride in the idea of paying freelancers quickly and well. And they use that as a way to like attract and retain better talent. I have also been stung stand by some of the questions that come up in these meetings with publishers where I feel like I'm begging them to pay faster than net 90, you know, and they're asking me to bend the technology to pay net 90 and I and I've gotten to the point where with some of my say, can you express to me why someone should be paid 90 days after? Yeah. And then actually, the interesting thing they said about contracts that actually comes I've seen them say it's net 90 for everyone, but then there's certain people get paid net 15 Okay, I guess those people made more of a fuss or Yeah, not so sure.
And I'm interested in that whole like, dual track sometimes I think, yeah, you know, there's this like, oh, so and so was our star writer and these people, we just throw them crumbs. What What have you seen about some of those dynamics going on?
I think those are very real. As a publisher myself of a comedy website, which is, you know, smaller, I do see a little bit of the logic for it's a little bit of, there's these certain types of articles and certain authors who will publish pieces that kind of keep the lights on. And then there's a lot of other stuff that we care deeply about, but when you just look at it like oh, we lose money when we do that. And so I guess I understand it on that level, but it is still, I don't think that there's much moral justification for paying so many people net 90 And then letting some people get paid net 15 I don't even know if there's any. There are that many other professions where like net 90 for an independent worker is super useful. I mean, yeah, if you paid someone to paint your house or pay in 90 days, don't worry about
it. Yeah. And usually you pay part up front and then the rest.
Yeah, I don't see very much of that at all. Yeah, I don't see people even asking about that. It's mostly you're gonna pay him after.
See, I actually do ask for a deposit when I'm doing not writing projects. But if I'm doing editing or you know, strategy, or speaking like all my speaking gigs, I asked for 50% to save the date. And so then when it cancelled everything cancelled and march 2020. I had income, but I would think if people as you're saying or embarrassed about their rates, at least they could pay us faster. Yeah, no, because it sort of makes up for it. If there's a low paying client, you know, they're gonna get you're gonna get paid 15 days after you invoice. Yeah, you know, it makes it a little more worth it.
I've actually seen freelancers basically express that. That getting paid without a hassle and getting paid quickly reduces some of the it opens up their ability to say, Okay, this can be one of my clients that just doesn't have that much money.
Yeah. I also am curious about your perspective on for assigning editors since we have a couple in the room. Often I see. You know, we're opening a new vertical, this, you know, assigning editors told, go recruit a stable of freelancers, and this is your budget, and these are the number of pieces we want. It's a huge task, like what do you see as sort of the best practices for assigning editors who maybe are in that position of just scrambling to fill the section and wanting to manage folks, you know, humanely, but maybe,
you know, for that one, I almost wonder if we should open up to the audience because maybe someone out there has a better answer of how they're doing it currently. Yeah. Any assigning editors who've been tasked with finding new freelancers willing to share how they go about it?
I worked at national
databases from like the Society of environmental journalists, like science Writers Association, and they're not super well curated databases. So there's like no great way to really search on a granular level. Based on what the Freelancer specializes in. But I have found some
interest and then once you once you curate Do you pretty much put out a blast and say what you're looking for. Okay.
I'm curious. Like if you feel like being on the last or
so, when my very first week as the music editor of SF weekly, actually, my first day. Within the first couple hours, there was an editorial meeting and I sat down and they said okay, Matt, the annual music issues next week, what's your plan? Okay, I guess we're gonna write it. And I had to build this team of freelancers. And it felt like a whole second job. To me. It was very difficult. I don't know entirely what the absolute best way is, what one of the ambitions that we have between out voice and study hall and while we merge those two groups, was the notion that you could basically have all those journalists out there and put out a notice a call for submission, and then that they could come to you and then you could, you know, come through them and assign out a couple of articles. I think, when I was music editor, and when I started doing hard times, I think we mostly just use Twitter. But Twitter is really degraded recently. xx, xx sorry, it's and I've noticed people leaving it and I've also noticed like the search function is not as good. So it is kind of hard to get the right group of people together.
Yeah, I've seen editors, when you have that mythical stable of freelancers, then send out sort of this is what I'm looking for, for the next you know, section or issue. You know, this is my deadline, sort of a call for pitches with like, pre vetted people that maybe they've worked with before or feel like have passed that bar of whatever respectability that allows them to get that message. And, personally, anyone in here freelance loves pitching, loves it can't wait. I hate pitching. I hate pitching. So when I see a call for pitches, I actually tend not to do it because I'm like someone else. We'll get there faster. You know, and I really liked the editors I work with, who know me well enough. They're like, Katherine, we want you to write I'm writing a story for Kimble here right now. On family fights at the holidays. If anyone has a good stories, I'm looking for anecdotes. I love that kind of stuff. Like I love relationships and behavior science and like how we why we do what we do and how do we change it. So my editors know that about me and and they'll assign just to me, which obviously I like, because then I'm not competing. So I like getting assignments. And I think once you develop relationships with freelancers that you could count on, you know, giving assignments is so amazing.
I think that's absolutely right. i One of the highlights of my freelance journalism career was when Rollingstone reached out to me because something was happening in the Bay Area, and they knew that I was in the Bay Area and I wrote for them a couple times before and they liked it. I was like, Alright, cool. I'm the Bay Area guy. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So I think it's good as a freelancer. Once you develop a niche where like, you're known to people as like, these five things, you know, I'm interested in
it is a little scary though, because you get put in a box and it's really hard to get out of it. Sometimes.
Yeah, it can be. It definitely can't be fortunately, my box has so many different branches, that I feel like some editors see me this way and others see me this way. But I'm really curious. I was so interested when you bought study hall. What why, and what are you hoping to do and what do you see as you know, the direction that community is headed now?
Sure. Yeah. Well, so building out voice for the last five or so years. I've had the opportunity to work with some customers like Hearst and Adweek. We're in the process of onboarding our biggest one yet, which is AlJazeera. And we've gathered a large group of freelancers and we built a little tool for call for submissions and the editors at out voice really like it so pretty much you can put out this call to other freelancers on out voice. I had been a member of the study hall community for a little while and you know, I just love the vibe of the community. Like I said, you know, meeting up with journalists when I was a freelancer was some of the best times I've ever had. And I felt like the listserv and the communications that were going on. Were very interesting. And so I thought, if we merged the two together, pretty much you'd have all these out voice publications and they'd be able to communicate to the study hall community, and then the study hall community would get more opportunities. So rather basic idea. And then what I found when I got into it, was that the study hall founders had both gotten book deals, and which is a great thing for any freelancer to do. And maybe we should get into that a little bit. But it also is very time consuming. And I found that study hall was in need of like a breath of new life. And I knew that our boys had the time, energy resources to do that. And so that's a mission that we've been on for just, you know, four or five months, but it's been pretty exciting. One of the things that there's two things that we're doing as far as like future stuff. Well, there's two things immediately that we're doing. One is a grant program. It's based on the idea that I started my first publication with 800 bucks. And there's all these really easy tools out of the box like WordPress and Shopify and all these different things that you can use. And I was able to actually sell that publication a couple years later, and it changed my life in like a really meaningful way. And I saw I'm a really big proponent of freelancers owning more of their work, rather than always selling their work. And even if you want to sell your work constantly have something on the side they own, and that you're building. And so we started this grant program at study hall with the idea of helping more people start their own thing that they own. And the community has responded really well to that. It's really exciting to see. So that's exciting. And our grants still open for Yeah, we're giving out for grant. There's about 12 more days, we just push back the deadline to apply and it's for any any type of project, a podcast, publication, newsletter, anything that you're going to own is what we're what we're looking to encourage people to do. And then you don't just get money you get pulled into a group that we're going to help open our network to and mentor and give advice and try to help make you succeed. So we're doing that and then also, we're doing some like more partnerships. A couple interesting ones that are coming up, down the pipe is on the topic of intellectual property. basically creating a pipeline for study haulers when they're out and about reporting. If they see something that looks like it might be a docu series or might have a TV or video component to it, to actually have a connection to go to these producers and option out ideas. So that's something that we're working on pretty quick. And then another thing is a couple different newsletter companies getting study haulers, discounts, and or direct connections and or mentorships if they want to start their own newsletter.
Yeah, awesome. Well, I have one more question for Matt. And then we're gonna throw it to the audience. So unless you have more, but please start thinking about questions you'd like to ask us. I wonder if I could get a volunteer to carry the mic around to anybody who has a question. Thank you. Appreciate it, Ryan. So I know when we were sort of preparing for this, you know, we were both talking about like, what is the current landscape obviously some publishers are doubling down and saying we just want you know more freelancers, but then are you also seeing maybe a retrenching where I talked to one editor who said, Oh, yeah, three years ago, we would just assign to anyone we just wanted more and more and more content, and now it's very small.
Okay, you know, I had a, I had a publisher say something like that to me. They said, clearly, we were over invested in editorial. And I looked at their spend, didn't go down that much. And so I think people are saying that, but I think the reality is their business model. It's a freelance content creation machine. A lot of them so unless they're really getting their hands dirty and changing things, I think some of that stuff. A little bit of hot air. Yeah, just a little bit, because I had to literally say, we were over invested in editorial, we have to pull back and then I can look month over month at his spend and I'm like, You didn't pull back Yeah. In six months
ago. Interesting. Very interesting. Thank you for the inside lives. And so do people have questions in the audience? Yes. Thank you. I think they are audio recording, but I am not giving up my IP rights to this audio recording.
I'll give up my now got anything to say.
Hi, thank you for this. I'm a Philadelphia based freelancer. I've been doing it for about six months. I guess. My question is kind of like a mix of things. You talked about. But I mostly do. I'm a science writer. But the most lucrative work is like institutional writing. So writing about research for colleges and universities. And I've found quite a bit of like, client work there and I think of like them as sort of like long term clients. But I don't know how to think of journalism in the same way. Like I think of them that is more like one off pitches. So do you have any like thoughts or recommendations of like how you sort of develop journalism client work, if that makes sense? Like, like, I couldn't imagine not having these hospitals pay me but I don't that's not really the work I want to do. So I just don't know how to think about journalism in like, a similar way.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think of journalism client work is like the bread and butter middle. Tier. And I'm not saying that in a derogatory way, just like from the prestige factor of our industry. The Atlantic, you know, has very few people that have regular gigs there. Right. And so it's more of the sort of middle tier bread and butter. So I would look for trade publications, I would look for places that have like, for instance, experienced Life magazine is published by Lifetime Fitness. That's one of my favorite clients. And so it's a magazine. It's a journalistic publication, but it has it doesn't have that sort of a newsstand. USA Today magazine group had a magazines like that as well. So ones that are not everyone's top three, want to get landed in. And also, I would also ask like the editors you do get successfully into, just say, Hey, do you have regular writers because I'd really like to be one. I am in the OMA women's leadership accelerator this year, and we had a workshop in, in in Chicago in March. And at the end, we sort of talked about like, what is our hope for the next six months? What do we want to achieve? And I wrote down I want to have a podcast newsletter or column writing about either behavioral and mental health or journalism, equity and ethics. And then I asked the editor at Neiman reports. Hey, would you want me to write a column about media equity and ethics? And she said, Oh, yeah, we'd love that. How often do you want to write it so sometimes youth You know, the relationships you already have, can develop into that regular gig if you just ask, and even Washington Post I've been doing one off pitches to The Washington Post for a years. And then a couple of years ago, Amy Joyce, who edits the on parenting section said, I'm really tired of managing all these essays, freelancers, and they were moving from like an essay, personal essay model to more reported features. And she said, You know, I'd like you know, I'd like you to be one of my regular people, because I know, that's the kind of work you do having come from journalism, and not being a personal essayist, which a lot of her writers were. So I think it's definitely possible, especially once you intentionally look at the publications you read that have the same names over and over, that'll give you a lead. I also have had a lot of luck with like nonprofits and that may have a newsletter or they have white papers they need edited. Obviously, that's not journalistic work. But yeah, that's how I'd answer that.
I add one quick thing. From a publisher perspective, there's often a process of looking over which articles quote unquote, did best, and publishers often also look at the exact amount of dollars that each article generated. And if your idea or format or content type that was published once did well, then they have every incentive in the world to do it again and again and again and again. So I guess one thing I would say is, when you're pitching your idea a maybe make it some sort of naturally reoccurring theme, or make it a format or something that you feel like could go again. So it's like, if it's a q&a, and then it does really well. If you pitch them another q&a Then, editorially, people might get attached to the idea and say, Well, why don't I just turn in one q&a Every other week for you? You know, once they're proven to be doing well, it's one way to look at it.
And I think we had a question in the middle if you don't mind passing on the Oh, great. Perfect. You mentioned the red flags. Get a chance to chat dialog. Sure. Yeah. So they're in two areas. One is in your intellectual property. And that is where you're going to look at the rights that you are either licensing, which is good, you want to license rights, shorter period of time is better because then you get them backlog, you know, sooner. Or it could be either your licensing the rights for a set amount of time for different media, or it could be you're assigning the rights, which is bad, because you don't want to assign your rights forever. You want to license them or it could be work. For Hire. That's the other phrase, which is also bad. So license good assign work for hire are bad. You're good. You basically means that you are like a carpenter who was given plans for a book bookcase and you built it. You did not put any of your own creativity. into it, and you don't and you don't retain any rights. So if you write an article for Mother Jones magazine, as I did, and it goes viral and gets 6 million page views and becomes the most read story they've ever published, and then you want to write this book, you have to ask their permission and possibly licensed the article back from them, even though you wrote it. The other red flag is around indemnity. And when you indemnify the publisher, you're saying if we are sued, even if it's for a frivolous reason, I will hire a lawyer. I will be the one to defend I will defend you publisher, even if nothing that I did wrong until we get to trial and then maybe I'll get my legal bills paid back. And that's a terrible thing to to sign as well. said I've had very good luck with having a indemnification clause that was one way where I take all the risk, at least turned into mutual indemnification so that we each defend each other. So I'm not just in there in the courtroom by myself. Right. I'm there with time inks, lawyers.
So that was that was gonna be my next question was I because I feel like mutual indemnification is where a lot of those things end up. So it's interesting to think that you think that that's reasonable, because that's, that's whenever I can't sign a contract without my lawyer yelling about mutual indemnification.
I appreciate that and having that perspective. Then we had another question here. Hi, okay. So I've been freelancing in my local, I'm from Wisconsin, and I do a lot of stuff on state politics, but I want to try and expand to doing more like bigger outlets that frankly pay a little more like regional or national or So any advice for people who have been kind of mostly freelancing on the local level and how to kind of step up to those bigger and bigger outlets? Yeah, I mean, I definitely have opinions. But
I'll go really quick. My thought process on freelancing which was keep in mind I wasn't hyper successful with it was to treat some of the bind lines like stepping stones, and to not get trapped too much in any one place. So if you're just freelancing for an extended period of time at one place, try to go like to the next one and then next one and the next one. So it's a good thought process that you have, but I would say take the credibility that you've developed with your local reporting, and then use that to get a byline anywhere a little bit bigger and then kind of snowball from there. I would also say I guess you got to look for some pitch calls be what I would say look for some people who are looking for work, but go ahead.
Yeah, no, that's exactly what I would say. And I sometimes even say, like, look at writers that you admire, who maybe are further down the path and decode their career, say like, oh, they were writing for this place, and then they wrote for this place. So maybe they were writing for the Fast Company. And then they started writing for the New York Times business section, you know, and and see, like, what are those stepping stones? Right when, you know, the New York Times Small Business section was looking for a writer, you know, who do they consider their farm team, you know, and decode their careers that way. I also would say there is value if you have an amazing Wisconsin story. You know, the editors on the coasts always feel like oh, you don't have anyone there. If you have just like, a stunning story that can be your ticket to bigger publications. I was just talking with a colleague of mine, Louise Ridley, who is a Features Editor for Insider. She's in the WL la cohort this year. And she's looking for gripping stories that are driven, character driven. So she's looking for long form narrative, and that's the kind of thing you only really can find if you're in a community and you know, like, what's the hot thing everyone's talking about? You know, for example, she run ran one story about a someone who fell off of that Denali and survived and was like the first person ever to survive, and now their partner is being sued for maybe letting them fall. So that kind of she's looking for that kind of really just like page turning or click clickable type long form story. So So I would say, you know, if you come across a story that just makes you feel like people need to know about this People Magazine, right, or like some of these national outlets that are that don't have folks in Wisconsin, are looking for sort of authentic local, community based reporting.
One other quick thing if you all give you a card after the after the talk, I'll get you into study hall every Thursday study all has a opportunities newsletter that goes out to where Chris, who works at study hall has gathered all the pitch calls for a bunch of big and small places. And as you know, pitching is not a lot of fun. But
my first year I did
so I thought I thought that was really cool about study. Hall when we were looking at it was like I really struggled with I was writing for advice SF weekly and Rolling Stone and getting those contacts or those editors it was like fighting and climbing and like it was really difficult took years really to prove to people and meet people at parties or whatever and so the one thing that's cool is like maybe with a list of everyone looking for pitches, maybe you can make your way in somewhere, make a new contact.
Yeah, and I definitely know people who are very successful just by being fast and responding quickly to pitch calls, but maybe my brain is just slower. Now that I've been doing this for so long. Did you have a question?
I had a weird interaction with a potential client. We'll see if that ever works out. They wanted to have some ghostwriting done on their behalf. They hadn't done it before. And they said can you give us a contract and like I don't want him to write contracts that would go into law school and then be making actual money. Where should I be looking? I actually asked Google bar to suggest one for ghostwriting, and it looked alright, but I have no idea.
I took out the Nolo guide to copyright law from the from the library. And 15 years ago, it had a CD ROM in the back and so I literally just took that template. Akos Alliance also has a really good contract. We have a link to that on our website. The ij.com that you can customize for ghostwriting. I don't know if they have a ghost writing one. But yeah, so I basically just would do a licensing agreement. You know, and that licensing agreements are really simple. But a contract is just an agreement. What am I going to do? What are you going to pay me? How many times can you revise it you know, what are the you know, what are the terms basically, and I think a good copyright law or a contract law book will will have that
one small, other is maybe maybe just put it right back on him to say I don't do that. You're hiring me. Once for the
story. I actually like it when people ask for a contract because then I get to set the terms okay. And I make it really generous to me. I'm like, I will license this to you for 15 days. You know and then I get to resell it. That's right here.
Hi, I'm Amanda. And I'm actually working Insider. And I'm really taken over sort of the operation side of our like interfacing with freelancers. So I'm on the other side of this. And so we've talked about red flags. I'd be curious if you have any more red flags, but I do want to ask about green flags to like what would be your list of ideal things. If you're interacting as a freelancer with the publication like wow, this is this publication really has it down I would love to write
Oh, my gosh, wow. I love this question. Well, you're the one who's managing all that without voice. Would you say that?
Well, I love it. I love that question. I mean, I spent a decent chunk of my life trying to help publishers answer that question in a positive way. I think you know, you have to tell the Freelancer what you're about. And I think personal I think the speed of which you pay people is one of the biggest green flags. I think, the general ease and how other freelancers who have worked for you talk about it is one of the biggest green flags. I would say searching your name on Twitter is also a green flag because a lot of times you know, you don't pay I always find this really interesting that publishers decide to mistreat these people with massive, influential audience right? Is very bizarre. I I think that there are a couple of notorious systems out there. I think one was called kalo. I remember my friends who worked at vise after me they were talking about the amount of paperwork and interactions. So I think yeah, I would say the biggest green flag is your net payment is under
60. Yeah, like a net 30 payment I think is
good net 30 is like I think anything over net 30 is kind of like you're pushing
it. Yeah, I'll most of my clients right now pay me in net 30 or net 25. So 25 or 30 days after I send the invoice and one of my favorite was a nonprofit in DC. And I swear the operations manager must have driven to my house and put it in my mailbox because I would like invoice and then three days later we my mailbox. So speed of payment, ease of invoicing. So if it's like really easy to submit an invoice electronically is great ease of uploading your W nine filling out the writers contract. So I like and don't like DocuSign because, yes, it's so convenient. But then if I do have a problem with the contract, it can be hard to get it I can't just cross it out. Like I used to be able to. And then obviously the two terms we talked about, like are you licensing all rights or are you just licensing for a period of time and then sharing non exclusively which is I think a very fair thing for both the both the publisher and the writer is like maybe it's exclusive for 90 days, and then non exclusive after that so you can syndicate it and resell it but so can the writer. I'm going to add a
couple more because a green flag for me is a flat rate. I've noticed more and more publishers going to performance pay. I'm not a big fan of this, like per page page per view. And I would say that would be a red flag for me personally,
unless it's like a bonus above and almost it's a bonus. Yeah. And then
another red flag for me would be I've heard a lot of freelancers. Tell me about publishers who say yeah, you can write for us. But you need to wait X number of things a week or you get kicked off the freelance roster. So
yeah, and actually given that my I kind of wished Mother Jones had an incentive pay structure since I got them sextillion page.
Sometimes it's great. But I'd love to talk to you after the after the talk if you want because I spent a big chunk of my life working on that problem
and anyone else in the room like things you would love to see in a contract or like onboarding experience Cassie? Oh, hold on one sec. I'm just gonna I thought of one other thing. So like, obviously the onboarding experience it being really clear. And I actually think it's really nice when there's a separate contact for pay issues versus your editor. So you know, like, I can just write to Charles and like, ask how his weekend was because I know all the accounting people and all for all my clients and be like, Hey, by the way that check hasn't come do you know what's going on? That's really nice because it just separates the editorial interaction from like, Where's my money?
And one more thing sorry, because I would say an institutional understanding of what a freelancer is and letting a freelancer be a freelancer. I've noticed more and more publications seem to have this weird concept of once you're freelancing for us, we actually don't want you to be freelancing for other people. I've heard this come up in my conversation with some publishers But why don't want my freelancers to go off and get other jobs? Yeah, why? Yeah, you pay him 125 bucks a pop for an article they write once a week. They need other jobs. Yeah. So I would say general institutional being on the same team as the freelancer.
Thank you for the question. And, and yeah, I'm happy to think about it as well. Cassie, did you want to
add Yes, this is actually along the lines of what I was going to ask you about. You know, I wanted to ask you, if you can, like share more about, you know, these experiences of communicating with editors about your actual content and how it's going to be you know, placed in the, you know, hierarchy of the news organizations. You know, editorial, you know, direction or editorial platform. I kind of do what i i Like actually like pitching you know, I'd like to research involved in developing a pitch and I do a pretty decent job at getting the thumbs up on stuff. But then there's sometimes there seems to be a snag and you know, what I communicate and what they communicate and usually as in terms of the pay and when the things are going to be published. But I think that some of the concerns that freelancers independent journalists have is, you know, how much is the news organization going to promote the work are you going to do you know, stuff on your social media platforms to promote the work, you know, in a lot of the nonprofit newsrooms also have, you know, they have, like, kind of like webinars or other outlets where they bring their journalists there to talk about the story, and how the story came to be, you know, so does the Freelancer kind of get to participate? Do you think consider the freelancers or the independent journalist, work as, you know, a person who could go on and you know, speak on a radio show about the story, that sort of thing?
Yeah, let me answer before I forget all the questions. So this is a really good, good question. And in fact, I think that's the answer I should have given to the previous question about the green flags. I actually have a checklist. Anyone who emails me I'll send you the checklist. It's I think it may also be posted on our website. I can't remember. But it's a checklist for a new client or a new assignment. And it's every you know, when am I getting paid how much? You know, what, what is how many sources do we think are going to be in it? What the structure gonna be like? Basically every single thing on their checklist? The checklist is a mistake I made because I didn't ask. So when I first got an assignment, I tried to really be clear with the editor timeline. What is their editorial process? How much fact checking will I have to do because if I know I'm gonna have a line by line factcheck, with documents having to be uploaded to a Google Drive, I will collect those during the reporting process instead of having to recreate them at the end. So you know, that checklist has really saved me a lot of heartache and also forces the editor to think a little harder about what structure do I want for this? Is it an anecdotal lead with three experts and two anecdotes, or is it more of a like, you know, am I going to want to cite research papers? So even upfront, you can clarify some of those things that end up being a hiccup later. In terms of social media promotion, I feel like the actually can be good to get to know the audience people at the places that you work to because they're usually super friendly and nice. And if you share, you know, share that publication stuff regularly then when your your comes out, they'll share yours. So it see that not so much as like asking ahead of time in like a negotiation way as much as relationship building. And sort of understanding what those members of the team need and how you can help make their job easier. You know, if they and ask you know, now for Nieman reports, I have a column for Nieman reports on equity in journalism and media careers. And the audit the social team members in this brainstorming meeting we have for three weeks so I know like what she's interested in, if I can give her some points that come out of the column or, you know, images that helps make her job easier. Does that answer the question? Oh, and then speaking. I again think that's like a relationship thing. Like if the story does really well, it's always a good opportunity to say, Hey, if you have any opportunities to present on this, I'd love to and then they at least know that you're interested. But I think that also kind of develops more organically. Did you want to add anything that
I think you nailed that my I would just drive home the point that you you said a couple times which is make their job easier. I think anytime you're freelancing mentally framing it as an opportunity to take work off of other people's plates, and give them something interesting that they couldn't do themselves. Some of my most successful pitches, were very brief, very short pitches where I said, I've got this exclusive interview with this person, I can deliver you a q&a, and someone who had just ignored me for four pitches previously said, Great, yeah, let's do it.
And the thing we hear from editors in all of our webinars at the IJ is they don't mind reminders. Like if you pitch them and you nudge A week later, they're not gonna say well, they reminded me I'll never assign to the right. Because we all get email overload just don't be like the next day, unless it's a super timely pitch. I also have heard from more editors that they're open to simultaneous submission. So that's more just disclose it. If you're pitching. If it's a timely story. You're pitching it simultaneously. Just put that in the pitch like, because this is timely, I'm pitching it multiple places. But you know, my formula for a pitch is that you want to show that you read the publication and it's the why this story for us. The second one is why now right is there a news peg? Is there something timely? And then the third one is why you Why are you the right person to write this story? Because you have an exclusive interview, or because you have developed some expertise on the beat or you have a lived experience? So I feel like if you could make the case for all three of those and you can answer all three of those questions. You're gonna get out yes much more easily.
Hi, I'm so I had been working for branded content for the last three years and I want to make my I've been making slowly my pivot back into journalism and one of the things I've encountered is there because I don't have a lot of recent connections and and clips when it comes to journalism is a little bit harder to pitch. One of the cases I encountered was that I worked on a podcast that took me about four months to produce ended up winning a couple of awards. But because they had the flat rate fee, I ended up getting paid about $1,000 for the podcast total. So I'd love to hear a little bit more on like maybe negotiating and working around confidently those flat fees. Yeah. Because yes, they can be helpful and useful when when the story doesn't take, you know, months and months of production, but But you know, sometimes I feel like especially I can talk about myself when it's sort of like, Oh, I'm grateful that you're taking the pitch, however, it's worth more money. So if you can speak to that a little bit.
Yeah, that's also on this checklist, which is what is the editorial process like how many rounds of revision? Right? And obviously, we can't always hold a publication to that. But if at least you set it up upfront, you sort of create an expectation of how long it's going to take. I will also say Has anyone heard about my three P's model? That I created like 10 or 12 years ago, okay, so that I won't be boring you. So any gig is going to satisfy one of the in one of three buckets pay? It's going to pay? Well, it's going to go in your portfolio. So it sounds like that podcast is your portfolio piece, or it's going to be a passion project that you just have to tell that story like that. And thank you. And I mean, it would be great if you had all three of those but but you need to know which one it is. Because if you were doing something for PE and they're treating you like this with like multiple rounds of revision and dragging on and changing the scope, that's not going to work. And that's the point where you know, a hard line of it sounds like the scope has changed since we first started this project. This is my rate for overtime work beyond the scope. Would you like me to revise and send a new contract right, that kind of clear communication. If it's a portfolio piece, you may just suffer? And like, No, you're doing it for portfolio. And I had one person in our workshop we did at the Asian American journalists Association. We have an exercise we make people do before the workshop. To calculate their hourly rate. She said I just realized my anchor client is paying me $1 an hour because it just takes that long. So knowing the hourly rate is the most crucial thing as a freelancer you can do and it's fine to take a lower hourly rate, if it's for one of the good reasons, but don't take it just to have something because then you're never going to make enough money to live.
You are a wealth of knowledge. You know, I feel I feel like I've seen a lot of I think bad advice out there that really drives home. You know, this is the only reason why you should do this and should only take this much and I think that you just presented a much more complex, nuanced but true to life. Piece of advice there.
So yeah, yeah, three P's three P's. If you see anyone else coaching someone with the three P's model, let them know I created it. I don't mind I'm happy for people to share it. I just like getting credit. Other questions? I have Oh, yes.
Is it on? Okay. So I just wanted to know if you could talk more but we selling for. So I do freelancing, but mostly for literary work one thing I realized that it's really hard that if you place it somewhere to find another place to put it because a lot of them say yes to not be published before. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, it's a really good question. I don't know. Maybe you should do syndication. That would that be a good project for you? I don't know too much about something. There was a place here actually, in the exhibit hall. That was syndicating. And I went up and asked them and they said, Well, we charge a fee. I'm like, No, it should go the other way round. Do you pay me to syndicate my work? It's hard. I would say it used there. There have been some attempts at Mass syndication. I find the way that I make it work best is by pitching a different angle. You know, I wrote a story about mentorship. For fortune. I used to write for Fortune all the time. They were a great client until they cut their rates. And then I saw I developed this expertise on like, what how to find a mentor how to be a good mentor. And then I pitched a similar story to Bankrate and a similar story to financial planning. So it's more you know, once you are like, Oh, this is a cool topic. You know, I can write it for different places, and just let the editors know, this is something I've covered before, you know, so they don't feel like you're pitching the same exact story to them or they're not taken by surprise. So I think that tends to be the best or if for example, you become an expert on the Dodd Frank regulation provisions for new consumer products and financial services. You can write lots of stories in 2008 for all the people who want to know. Was there a question over here too Yeah, it helps for the recording for the folks who aren't able to join us or I think they're gonna make it through available also through the online one, Benny.
Hi, I'm Molly. I'm from story Hunter. So we're also a freelancer and publisher network essentially, we're more on video production though. So I'm kind of curious how some of this advice might evolve or change or stay the same for folks who are freelance, you know, still in news and media but more on the video or production side or post edit work or anything like that.
Yeah, interesting. I basically will answer any question even if I have no expertise. So I would say like, hourly rate, I mean, it's all about the hourly rate because we are trading our time for money. Right? Even if you save some copyright rights, you're still you don't know you're going to get value from that. So ultimately, like having very clear scope of work, knowing what to expect in both from both sides of what the final product will be like. And then just being really clear about, you know, the time involved and, you know, understanding your own process. But yeah, it's interesting. I was talking to a photo journalist. And I think this is another thing that's helpful for folks to know, if you don't have a contract with your client, you automatically have the rights. So actually, someone was doing a spot news assignment and filed it and it was published and then they sent her a terrible contract that took all of her rights, and she refused to sign it. And so basically, in that moment, the publisher had violated her copyright by publishing something without a license. So she was actually in a good negotiating position, and she was able to change that contract to be much more favorable to her. So I think photo and photo and video journalists are getting more sophisticated about understanding like what are their rights and I think photo is more clear video will be very interesting to see how it evolves. Yeah. Thanks.
Here's a question. That was submitted by a spouse of a freelance journalist. How do you guard against or protect yourself against unexpectedly going through many rounds of edits?
Well, I think it really is this, you know, upfront conversation with your editor. And then some of it is also doing your homework. So knowing this publication is just gonna have me do a million rounds of edits, or this one isn't. But you know, really being clear as much as you can on the structure of the story who you're going to quote, you know, what is it going to look like? What are the must haves in there? And then in the first round of edits, also being really clear, and I sometimes will even send a memo back after we've had a conversation. These are the five things we talked about changing. This is the new source. I'm going to find that's done right and that way, it's documented, and it's super clear. It's hard because things do change. And I also wanted to say one other thing, but now I forgot what it was. Oh, someone had asked about the New York Times. So I first started reading for you asked about the New York Times.
Yeah, maybe I think we're just about out of time. So maybe we should end on your Okay, getting your first byline in New York Times something I've always wanted to do.
Yeah, actually, I'm embarrassed to say it was super easy. I just pitched them and it was for the small business section. And I had been talking with a friend of mine in Wisconsin, the person from Wisconsin, and he does a business valuation. And he was saying that succession planning is just really, really challenging for small business owners, because often it's a family business, their child may work there. It's hard to value the business. And I pitched the idea and I think because it came organically out of beat reporting, there was just a good idea. And I had a lead anecdote. And actually, from that, I can tell you, the fortune editor who I work end up working for for years. He read the Small Business section religiously, and he loved that story. And so he actually called me and asked, you know, Hey, would you like to write for fortune, and fortune pays paid a lot less so. The New York Times paid $1 a word? I think it was a 1200 word story. There were many rounds of edits. I've heard that. Yeah, I've heard there were like four rounds of edits. It took a lot of my time, fortunately paid 600 But we would be done. Like one round of edits. He loved my work. He knew exactly what he was looking for. So ended up being better. on an hourly basis. Did
you get the contact information of the person in New York Times to pitch them? Was it just Twitter or
I actually think those sections are often looking for folks. Okay, it was I don't remember how I got it or some sort of pitch call. No, there wasn't a pitch call, but I knew it was a good idea and I wanted a New York Times byline, okay. And actually, you know, we've had New York Times editors speak at the IJ events all lot. And so the retirement editor is always looking for pitches. The real estate section is always looking for pitches. And those also can come out of communities, right because they want and so some of the sections that they have to produce every week, they they're almost all freelance written, that can be a really good way into the New York Times.
We got a question about how to break out local news. So maybe looking at some of those sections. That'd be an awesome way to break out a local news to go right to New York.
Well, thank you all so much. We are over our time. So thanks for staying and Matt and I are both happy to chat afterwards. And good luck with all of your editing and freelancing journeys. And thank you so much to Brian Lewis for doing that manning the mic. What was Yeah, really good energy to see you again. So good to see you.