FFJ Guest Voices: Hardship facing freelance journalists with disability

And don't forget our upcoming webinar

Emma Wilkinson

Jun 25, 2025

Discover how Synapse can help you find stories and build meaningful relationships with PRs.

Take me to Synapse

Webinar - AI, Public Relations & Building Trust

Freelancing for Journalists is co-hosting a free webinar with Synapse on relationships between journalists and PRs on Wednesday 2nd July at 12pm.

With AI-generated experts hitting the news in recent weeks (including our newsletter last week), on top of an already rapidly shifting media landscape, for PR professionals and freelance journalists, it is a time of both challenges and opportunities.

This virtual Spotlight Session on AI, Public Relations & Building Trust, will explore how PRs and freelancers can rebuild trust, foster better relationships, and responsibly integrate AI into workflows.

Panellists include FFJ co-director Emma Wilkinson, award-winning freelance journalist Rosie Taylor who is also the the author of the media pitching advice newsletter Get Featured, and James Clothier, Grayling UK’s new head of crisis, and a media strategist expert with over 20 years in senior editorial roles at The Sun and Daily Mail.

The online event is free and there will be plenty of chance for questions. To book your place and find out more click the button below.

Book now

As we write this week’s newsletter, a growing number of Labour MPs are supporting a bid to block the government's planned welfare changes. The growing backlash centres on proposed changes to personal independence payment (PIP) and universal credit, including tighter rules on who is eligible.

This week Lydia Wilkinson, an award-winning freelance journalist and editor who specialises in disability and social inequality writes about how this has impacted her. She is living with a range of conditions including long Covid which effect her day to day life. Lydia is the current editor of Disability Review Magazine, and has written for publications including The Metro, The Independent, and Stylist magazine. Her next book, Criminally Misunderstood, will be out in 2027 with Bonnier Books.

When I was a little girl, all I wanted to do was write. In an era when Jacqueline Wilson was king, my heroes were writers, journalists - the people who populated my bookshelves, rather than posters of boy bands on my bedroom wall.

It is the only skill that I have - to cobble together quotes and tell a story on paper from firsthand experience. Research is my beat - obtaining documents, formulating questions, finding out information. I still think that this is the greatest job to have, the ultimate ‘power’.

Yet the older I get, the more I realise how privileged journalism is and how unattainable this is becoming. A piece in the Press Gazette recently suggested that journalists are becoming older, more left wing, as well as more likely to be freelance.

As a response to all but a state of collapse in publishing, and ongoing redundancies in the industry, this seems inevitable. If you write books, you’ll also find a similar picture. The start of this year saw Unbound going into administration after suppliers, investors and freelancers went unpaid and the closure of The Good Literary Agency after a failed funding bid.

Freelancing is not an easy option. We’re all facing rising costs, shrinking budgets, pitches going unanswered. On top of this, the industry is failing to platform diverse voices and different perspectives.

Ever since leaving education and completing my NCTJ, backed by the Journalism Diversity Fund, I have been freelance. This was by necessity rather than choice. For every scheme I applied to, I was either not qualified enough or too qualified because I had training.

If we cared about a diverse media, we would be taking proactive action - not just raising awareness or asking questions about ‘what can we do to help’. Unfortunately the lack of care was, and is, still not surprising to me. Being a journalist with a disability is becoming increasingly untenable.

Covid 19 finally found me in March 2022. Long Covid comes with a multiplicity of diagnoses that are a constant. I experience almost daily functional seizures, vertigo, other mobility issues - enough to have to use a cane whenever stepping foot outside my home.

I do daily therapy and monthly outpatient sessions, along with other hospital appointments and a number of procedures. I am also autistic, and experience pain throughout my body. The diagnosis for dyspraxia and possible endometriosis is pending. I juggle this with trying to work as much as possible - be it writing my newsletter, editing Disability Review Magazine, pitching other pieces as a freelancer, conducting seminars, writing book proposals and manuscripts.

A lot of time in-between is spent resting, to remain independent for as long as possible. But now I’m facing my biggest financial crisis.

The talk of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) being cut fills me with absolute dread - and the silence about what to do is a despair I have wished to never know.

PIP is awarded to assist with the costs of disability; Scope calculates this is around £1000 extra per month by household. It is not for luxuries, and it is awarded regardless of whether or not a person is in work - because it is not to do with employment. It already takes over a year to obtain, with ongoing assessments as to the depth of your disability.

Now that the eligibility criteria is likely to be raised, there are no other alternative forms of support and it means that people who, say, cannot wash or cloth themselves, who need full time care, will have nowhere to go. Regardless of whether you are working, it’s likely that people like me will be forced out of the profession.

Your disabled freelance colleagues need you, now more than ever before.

Get entering the only awards dedicated to highlighting the essential contributions of UK freelance journalists. You have have until midnight on the 29th of August to get your submissions in. The categories are:

Best Specialist Journalist
Best News Story - sponsored by PayDesk
Best Feature - Sponsored by the NUJ London Freelance Branch
Best Investigation - Sponsored by the NUJ London Freelance Branch
Best Opinion Writer or Columnist
Best Piece of Work by a Student or Early Career Journalist - Sponsored by Women in Journalism