This is our last newsletter for 2020 and we have a lot to fit in. Hope you’re ready for a bumper read!
If you saw last week’s newsletter on our year in journalism you will know we have been doing a lot of number-crunching over at FFJ headquarters (what can I say, we love a spreadsheet).
We’ve also been asked many times recently about our plans for developing Freelancing for Journalists next year. Read on to find out more but first let’s take a step back and look at all we have done since March.
We initially launched the podcast with three bonus episodes on how the pandemic was impacting freelancers in an attempt to show some solidarity and share advice. At the time we still expected our project would be limited to one series and primarily be used as a university resource/teaching tool.
Now almost at the end of series 3 we have just passed 10,000 downloads over 24 episodes with 49 guests, and one dual cast. We have listeners in 55 countries and after the UK (with 60% of our audience) our second biggest audience is in India, followed by the US and Australia.
It maybe says a lot that Imposter Syndrome is our most popular episode to date. If you’ve not heard that one yet you can find it here.
Our Facebook community in which members ask questions, share advice and resources as well as their ‘Tuesday Triumphs’ now has 2,500 members with many more signing up every day.
This year we did five webinars via Zoom to which 241 people signed up.
We also did seven university talks to journalism and media students as well as one PressPad Insta live and PressPad video.
Our collaboration with journalism.co.uk to run a four-week online course on how to become a successful freelance journalist has now run twice and has been attended by 46 people many of whom went on to get their first commission.
The Freelancing for Journalists book - which is where this all began three years ago - was published in summer.
And we wrote five articles on freelancing for publications such as Journo Resources, journalism.co.uk and Underpinned.
We realised after taking on two work experience students at FFJ that there was an urgent need to try and get more opportunities for recent graduates or those on journalism courses so we launched our Journalism Work Experience Initiative. We had 50 freelance journalists sign up alongside 100 students.
Last but not least, two months ago we launched this free newsletter which is already being read by hundreds of subscribers every week.
It may be worth mentioning at this point that we did all this while working as full time freelance journalists and lecturers and we also wrote 483 articles between us.
Our income from Freelancing for Journalists is only around 10% of our total income and comes from a variety of sources (of which the book is a teeny proportion).
Around a third of that income is taken up by expenses which includes website hosting, insurance and paying our podcast guests. We are also investing in our new assistant. Welcome to the team Helen, we’re very much looking forward to working with you and we definitely need another pair of hands.
Looking ahead to 2021
So what do we have in store for you in the coming year? This will be the topic of a much needed strategy meeting in January but there are some things we know already.
There will definitely be more webinars and our members have told us some topics they want us to cover so watch this space, we will be announcing our programme early in 2021.
We will be running another round of the Journalism Work Experience Scheme and have quite a few of you already the waiting list.
Our journalism.co.uk course on How to become a successful freelance journalist now runs three times a year and you can already sign up for March. See here for more details.
Series 4 of the podcast is already partly planned and we have guests booked in for the first episode.
And we also hope to make our new research assistant role permanent over the next year.
Finally keep your eye out for more social media posts, short videos and other resources.
Writing for specialist titles
In this episode we quiz two specialist writers about how they carved out their niche.
Freelance music journalist Matt Parker discusses how he broke into magazines whilst technology journalist Sooraj Shah tells us how to approach editors when you cover a specialist beat.
You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Setting up a newsletter
And in our final episode of 2020 and series 3 we speak to we speak to two newsletter writers / freelance journalists about how they started.
Lottie Gross, travel writer and co-author of Talking Travel Writing, discusses how she set up her newsletter during the heart of the pandemic whilst Alistair Lane, author of Write at Home, talks us through the challenges of launching his jobs newsletter.
The episode will drop on 30th December and you can find it on our dedicated page or wherever you get your podcasts.
Triumph of the week
Can we count just getting to the end of the year in one piece? If not then our triumph of the week is definitely hitting our 10,000 download target for the podcast!
That feeling when…
You think you’ve finished for Christmas then an editor changes their mind and wants a story this week not in the New Year. Also Emma who has two news shifts left would like a bit less to be happening in the world please…
We hope you all manage to have a break over Christmas, whatever that looks like for you this year, and we look forward to seeing you all in 2021.
Do keep sending in your listener dilemma’s for the next series of the podcast. Either in our Facebook Community or to freelancingforjournalists@gmail.com.
If you like what we do at FFJ or have found our resources useful then perhaps you would like to buy us a virtual cuppa. Click the button to be taken straight to our Ko-fi page.
Bye for now!