Last year was a bit of a whirlwind for Freelancing for Journalists. Our podcast which was initially designed as a teaching tool launched in the middle of a pandemic and all of a sudden we were in demand.
By the end of 2020 we had published a book, launched a training course with Journalism.co.uk and a Facebook community, hosted multiple webinars and talks with university students, published numerous articles, found a sponsor, set up a website, created a newsletter, formed several collaborations and got our Journalism Work Experience Initiative up and running.
That’s not to mention the now 11,000 downloads of the podcast across three series.
There was no time to take a step back and look at what we wanted for FFJ and we knew we had to hit the pause button over Christmas and the New Year in order to make a proper plan.
As experienced freelancers we are used to this process and it is something we do as individuals for both short and long-term goals.
The New Year is an excellent time to do this but it shouldn’t be the only time freelancers take time to think carefully about how their careers are going and what they want to achieve.
It can be very helpful to reflect on how successful different aspects of your work are, what you most enjoy, and what you might like to do more of. For many of us freelancing is about control and achieving a good work-life balance but what if that hasn’t been the reality? Are there things we could be doing differently?
From a financial point of view it is also important to set realistic targets, work out if you are being paid fairly for the work you are doing, and where you might be able to boost your income or cut costs.
At FFJ headquarters we calculated what income we need to keep going and to employ an assistant in the long term while ensuring our content is as accessible as possible.
We have also taken stock of what we most enjoy, what aspects we want to expand and what hasn’t worked as well.
Our planning involved little things like what tools will help us work most effectively as a team, how to get more photos of us together when we are in constant lockdown 100 miles apart, and who should do which tasks. But we also made long-term decisions about where we aim to be in a year’s time and what is most important to us.
As a result we decided that our top 3 priorities for 2021 are:
A programme of webinars for 2021 covering popular topics we have been asked to run again, together with some new options.
Series 4 of the podcast will be coming soon followed by two more series before the end of the year. We have a list of topics already and some guests lined up.
A second round of our Journalism Work Experience Initiative as Covid-19 continues to hamper students and graduates obtaining placements.
There will be more details on all these aspects coming soon.
Triumph of the week
Finally coming to the end of a large analysis feature which required a lot of data crunching and seeing the final draft. At one point in Excel spreadsheet hell it seemed like this point would never come.
That feeling when…
You have a really, really great idea but for some reason you cannot get any commissioning editors to bite. The sheer amount of news around at the moment (remember slow news days anyone?) doesn’t help. Persistence is the key right?
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!