How to Be a Freelance Journalist
Getting Started: A Guide for New Writers
If you are a beginning writer wishing to break into freelance journalism, how do you get started?
Wondering who to write for and what to write about? It's not easy for beginning writers to do this. The mind can glaze over at the thought of all those thousands of magazines and newspapers. If you don’t even know where to start and the scope is just too big and confusing, don’t worry. What you must do is take it in small steps.
Know Your Markets
Become acquainted with the markets and start doing some serious browsing. There are hundreds of magazines and newspapers in supermarkets and newsagents. Try to read a newspaper regularly, plus magazines that you are interested in. Cut out articles that deal with your interests, or anything that you are curious about and would like to know more. Start an ‘Ideas File’. Keep your cuttings in this file as well as any other interesting snippets you may come across. As you research possible markets for your work, make sure to keep a list of these. You will find this very helpful once you start trying to sell your work.
Getting Ideas
Try to think about what kind of article you would like to write - what specific area of interest - and just deal with this for now. Editors love people who come up with lots of good ideas. Once you know where to look, ideas are everywhere. There are probably dozens of interesting ideas within your immediate family or neighbourhood.
It might be best at first to write about things that you know. i.e. job, hobby, personal experiences, things that are important to you like being unemployed, childhood, lack of confidence, family issues, disabilities, unhappy or happy childhood, specialist subjects like music, medicine, stamp collecting, golf, cookery, etc. so start thinking along these lines. All journalists get ideas from what other writers have written. Look through your free local newspapers and find something you could follow up for the national press or expand into a feature for a magazine.
Keeping a Journal
A serious journalist will always carry a notebook. Ideas are everywhere and they can come at any time: on a bus, in a pub or restaurant, while watching tv. ALWAYS have a notebook and pencil at hand wherever you are; place them at strategic points around the house, in the bathroom, kitchen, sitting room, on your desk, on your bedside table. It’s too easy to forget good ideas if you don’t jot them down.
Idea vs Subject
It is very important to think in terms of ideas as opposed to subjects. NEVER contact an editor and say something like “Would you like a piece on golf, Spain, relationships”, etc. It really doesn’t mean much. The editor wants to know what you are going to say about the subject - this is the IDEA. For example, if 'Smoking' is the subject, ideas could be How to stop? How not to start? Why young people are still smoking? Why do people ignore the warnings?
How to be a Freelance Journalist - Tips to Get You Going
