Media meltdown: news from New Zealand

I asked recently how your media recession is going (and please do take part in the poll on the right, by the way).

In response, Knowledge Workers blogger Bill Bennett writes in to sketch out an alarming scenario from New Zealand. You think we’ve got it bad in the UK? Be afraid…

The media has been hit particularly hard in New Zealand. The biggest independent publisher went bust. I worked for Fairfax, the largest newspaper publisher and 550 staff were cut from a total of around 1,700 in November 2008 across Australia and New Zealand – about 5% of its workforce. They were not all journalists, but journalists were disproportionately affected.

New Zealand accounted for 160 of the total cut – which was more than 5% and nearer to 10% of the staff in that country. This was on top of other cuts earlier in the year as newspaper subbing departments were dismantled with the work being sent to remote ‘centres of excellence’ known internally as ‘sub-hubs’.

At a rough estimate, 40% of journalists have lost their jobs in the past 18 months. Today there are about 20 percent of the number of working journalists there were in 1990. Every newspaper subbing department has been closed with most of the work farmed out to backpackers who earn the minimum legal wage.

And you still want to do that journalism degree? Seriously – unless you’re just doing it for the piece of paper, think about a different line of work…

How’s your media recession?

To mark today’s news that the recession has ended, I’m running a poll here at Freelance Unbound to see if my fellow toilers in the antheap of media feel the same way. 

The poll will be posted up on the right for a while – please do click to vote (though it would help if you do vaguely media/knowledge worker kind of work). 

The timing of all this is quite appropriate for me, as a few days ago I actually turned down a work commission for the first time in more than a year because I was too busy to do it. 

Visitors may in fact have noticed that things have been quiet here of late. That’s because I have been eye-wateringly busy doing real work – the kind with a pay cheque attached – so I haven’t had much chance to update the blog. 

That’s good news in many ways – certainly in terms of paying the bills. But it has made me wonder how the rest of the media world is doing. 

Looking back, my media recession lasted about five months, starting in about September 2008, during which a lot of regular work assignments dropped to nothing and my shift work looked threatened as the publishing house I am working for started restructuring and closing publications. This was scary.

In response, I did two things:

• Hustled for work
• Diversified

The hustling paid off, yes. But actually my main success came from a combination of luck and diversification. 

Right now I’m sitting in on the production desk of a financial publishing company filling in for someone who went on maternity leave a year ago. The luck part comes in because she has decided not to come back to work full-time – or even half-time – so I get to keep working and earning, which is nice. 

The diversification part comes in because the company in question runs events, and has decided to take its marketing and other design work in-house. Naturally, my production colleague and I fell on this work like wolves at lambing time.

Never mind that it’s not journalism. I don’t care, frankly (it’s why this blog is called Freelance Unbound instead of, say, Journalism Unbound). What it is, however, is an opportunity to be useful in the company. And being useful is a central pillar of freelance success, as I’ve noted elsewhere. 

In fact, my media recession has been characterised by a general switch away from what you might call journalism (writing, subbing, page layout) to a more diverse range of work (CMS production, brochure design, animated web ads). 

So what does this all mean for you? Are you struggling to keep following a more strictly defined path of journalism? Have you had to branch out into other areas and use new skills? Have you been forced to look for work in a call centre? 

I’d really like to know. Feel free to share via the comments – or add your vote to the poll on the right.

Yahoo: the perils of economic statistics

Not sure what state the UK economy is in? Better not read the papers and newswires today, then – you’ll only get more confused.

Today saw the release of the UK’s second quarter GDP statistics. Hmm. How bad were they?

“Bad”, says Yahoo Finance, which takes its content from  news service AFP.

British economy sees record contraction

That kind of bad. 

Oh, but wait. Does that mean the second quarter GDP figures saw a record fall?

Well, the Yahoo story certainly seems to think so:

Britain’s economy shrank in the second quarter at its fastest yearly pace since records began in 1955, as the worst recession since the early 1980s tightened its grip.

Ooh. Scary.

But, hang on a moment. What does that actually mean?

How can a quarterly figure shrink at a yearly pace? That actually doesn’t make sense.

And when you look at the story more closely, it actually reveals that the decline in GDP for Q2 was 0.8% – much less than the whopping 2.4% fall we saw in the first quarter (though more than the forecasters’ prediction of 0.3%. But then, what do they know). 

It turns out that GDP had shrunk by 5.6% in the three months to the end of June, compared to the same period last year.

But actually, most of that fall happened at the end of last year, and then the gruesome first quarter of this year. The GDP statistics just released today actually show that the worst might be over for the recession. 

Things are still pretty grim. But this is like the messy emergency landing in a swamp, rather than the terrifying plunge from the sky that we had earlier in the year. And we’ll probably be in the swamp for a while, which sucks. 

This graphic from the Guardian shows that things are better this quarter than last. Though don’t be fooled into thinking the uptick on the graph means the economy has started growing again. That’s another pitfall of statistical representation. 

But it does clearly show that the worst news happened three months ago. 

What does this mean? 

Pretty much that statistics can be pressed into service for whatever editorial angle you like. In this case the angle is: we’re all doomed. Though I’m not sure why – normally that’s the cue for anti-government papers to bash Gordon Brown. That isn’t happening here I think. Maybe it just makes for a more dramatic splash. 

The more representative story – things are still bad, though getting less bad, but they’ll stay that way for ages – is both less dramatic and more depressing. Which is probably why Yahoo went for a different – and misleading – slant.

11 key ways for journalism students to improve their employability

It’s a tough world out there in the media – what with grinding recession, a skillset that needs updating by the hour and a revenue model that’s been turned upside down by the web.

It doesn’t help that more students than ever before are being turned out by the UK’s journalism courses. That makes it even more difficult for journalism graduates to get a toehold in our industry.

So, here are 11 top tips for journalism students and graduates – and even those thinking about their UCAS application – to ensure you have the best chance to get some kind of journalism job.

It may not be the one you want – you know, the one that involves you interviewing J-Lo in a rooftop pool in LA, or drinking in Chinawhite with the F1 team. But this advice is aimed at helping open up the widest possible range of media options to journalism students, with a corresponding boost to their potential earning power.

Admittedly, this has a bias towards print and web. But a lot of the tips should be generic enough to be relevant if you want to specialise in TV or radio.

Any comments are welcome to add to the roster…

 

1] Don’t do your BA in Journalism

Yes – a bit of a curve ball, but it’s one I’ve talked about before. I’m a firm believer that gaining a specialism outside journalism as well as getting some journalism training has big benefits.

Reason: The more well-rounded your education and qualifications, the more desirable you are to media employers. Journalists generally create content about the wider world, not about journalism, unless you are working for the media section. So do yourself a favour and do your BA in something other than journalism. Yes, I know that if you’re a journalism graduate already, this piece of advice may be a bit late. But UCAS applicants take note. And for the rest, there’s always the Open University.

2] Get a BSc in life sciences

Are there other degrees that might work? Possibly – but science is the one that gets asked for most in job ads. 

Reason: It’s really useful to do a science degree because it opens your media career up to include things that otherwise you would be excluded from. You may have a fascination with biology, you may read popular science books about cosmology, but unless you have that piece of paper, you will simply be excluded from writing jobs and freelance subbing shifts on titles such as Nature and New Scientist and also from editorial work for scientific book publishers. Not interested in science? Fair enough – but this post is about maximising your employability. Science will do that. It will also help you gain credibility in the mainstream media.

3] Work on the student newspaper/web site/TV station/radio show

Reason: A no-brainer really. Your work will suck for at least a year or so, whatever you do – so make it suck when it doesn’t matter so much. Make all your most egregious mistakes at college and by the time you apply for a real job you might well have developed a decent style and learned some production chops. You get free access to all sorts of facilities and equipment and you’ll hopefully learn some production discipline. If you end up as editor of something, you also get to see that student journalism work can be utterly terrible – which will put you in a potential employer’s shoes and give you some valuable perspective.

4] Gain a post-graduate journalism qualification

Finally – journalism.

Reason: Unfortunately, HR box-ticking means you probably will have to have some kind of journalism certificate (though science graduates without a journalism qualification will probably find it easier to get a job in science-related journalism than a journalism graduate without a science qualification). But don’t spend three years getting it – an MA, or even a ten-week accredited course should be enough on top of your other superb skills to take you far.

5] Learn languages

I mean, as well as English. In my day the education system was against me, as I spent years learning French, of all things, in a range of different subjects, including geography and history. This has been totally useless, professionally speaking. But extra languages can be a big bonus for journalism jobs.

Reason: It will help you work abroad; it will help you work for foreign publications; it will help you with freelance assignments that involve contacting non-English speakers. Seriously, this is another no-brainer. Which ones should you learn? Think of [a] the news flashpoints in the world (so, Arabic might be worth a shot, or Russian) [b] where the jobs are (recently Dubai, so Arabic again, also German, according to the current job ads on Journalism.co.uk) and [c] what the rest of the world speaks (so Chinese and Spanish might be worth a punt).

6] Learn English

Seriously.

Reason: Your schooldays probably made you think correct spelling and grammar just isn’t that important. But for some people – weird old people who might employ you – it can be very important. So if you make an effort to polish your grammar and spelling it can really pay off. Top tip: Focus on apostrophes. You will gain a distinct advantage over nearly all other graduates…

7] Keep a blog (or other web site) and update it regularly

Reason: You’re a wannabe journalist. Writing is your life. So write. As I’ve said before, I can filter out 95% of all journalism students and graduates based on the fact that they just can’t be bothered to actually create content. Bonus points for making your blog nice-looking and adding plug-in-style functionality.

8] Understand the back-end of web publishing

Reason: Journalism is shading into web development and site maintenance. The more you know about this area, the more employable you’ll be. At the moment, this means being familiar with, probably, HTML/XHTML, CSS, and maybe PHP. If you have no idea what these are, take a course or, as I’m doing, plough through a heavy book until your eyes bleed. Crucially, this is not computer programming. But it is increasingly necessary for both web-layout and design. And don’t think that tools such as Dreamweaver or content management systems will allow you to work just with graphics and content. Understanding the code that lies beneath lets you troubleshoot why pages won’t load as you thought they would, and makes you indispensable around the production desk.

9] Learn to make compelling videos

Reason: If you understand the impact that YouTube and citizen journalism has had on the media, it should be obvious why video skills are vital. But while it’s important to understand all the technical side of video formats and uploading to the web, it’s also vital to make good, compelling video content. As well as learning the software you need, such as Final Cut Pro, also learn how to tell stories visually. Learn about storyboarding and planning. Understand visual language. And learn to tell compelling stories. Which is at the heart of journalism. Kind of works for audio too, but I think simple audio podcasting is on its way out (discuss).

10] Network, network, network

Reason: People give jobs to people. Never forget this. In my advice on successful freelancing on the FleetStreetBlues blog, I stressed the first key attribute for professional success was the ability to get on with people. For journalism students and graduates, This means getting to know media professionals, being friendly (though not pushy), asking about opportunities and generally trying to be helpful when you can. And you’d be surprised how willing many media folk can be to help if you approach them in the right way. Crucially though, be realistic about what, and who, you ask. There’s a lot more to say on this, so I’m going to expand on it in a later post.

11] Have a backup plan

Reason: You may not be able to land a proper reporter-style journalism job, no matter how hard you try, even if you’re pretty good. Because, as discussed, things are tough in the media world. But don’t despair. You can still work with words, pictures, audio and video in a creative way and get paid. Sometimes even more than the pittance that journalists normally get. 

How? Think laterally. Recovering Journalist Mark Potts has an excellent post here on life after journalism – but at a pinch it can equally apply to life instead of journalism. Your journalism skills – ie your creative writing, editing and research skills – can be applied in many different jobs. Closely related fields include PR and corporate writing (but brush up on your spelling and grammar).

And that’s it for today. Other suggestions (and courteous disagreements) are welcome via the comments column…

Portfolio magazine axed

Sad news from Condé Nast as it closes Portfolio magazine. 

I discovered Portfolio late last year when I stumbled on a dissection of the Wall Street collapse by Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis. It was riveting and very well written – as you would expect, I guess.

The reason for the closure seems to be plummeting ad revenues. I have no idea whether this is just because of the tanking economy, or also because the new digital world doesn’t have room for it. 

[Update: there’s a useful Valleywag piece here that lifts the lid on Portfolio‘s slide.] 

I’m not a believer in print for print’s sake – but I do think it’s a shame that high quality publications go to the wall as well as indifferent ones. 

I never bought a copy, of course – I just read it online. Which is the key problem for news and magazine publishing now.

So, yes. I guess that would make it my fault…

Ways to survive the media recession, part 5

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

At last, the end of the journey and a handy summary. 

But first, Recovering Journalist Mark Potts has a very good post on Life After Journalism that is really worth reading. 

A former 20-year journalist (hmm – like me), Mark Potts is now “an entrepreneur and consultant”. That means he managed to escape the media implosion – but still uses the range of journalistic skills he’s acquired in his new career. It’s a good post with some useful advice.

So, now – your eight-point summary.

1) Assess your existing skills

Think laterally – writers can sub, designers can do production, print specialists can move online and old journalists can teach. Also think about how your skills can work in related-but-different fields, such as corporate writing.          

2) Learn new skills

Build on your existing skills using a host of free web-based information, trial period software downloads and software training sites such as Lynda.com. Focus especially on web analytics and SEO for the web. Hobby-type skills can also come in useful – such as film-making, running workshops etc.                

3) Update your CV (resumé)

Create different CV/resumes that focus on different skillsets or media sectors. That way you can tailor your pitch more specifically to different clients.

4) Draw up a plan

Be organised and keep track of all your work hustling progress, day by day. 

5) Talk to your friends

Mates look after mates, so always ask people you know in the business if they are aware of opportunities. 

6) Contact others

Keep regular tabs on a range of job pages online – and even in print. Obviously follow Guardian.co.uk, Journalism.co.uk and Gorkana. It helps to use social media too. I just got Twittered by a new site called Sourcethatjob.com – it doesn’t have much in the way of journalism jobs, but it could be worth watching as it may grow. Students may be interested to see it has a few intern-type posts (ie no pay, but experience).  FleetStreetBlues has a nice post collating media job sites here.

7) Advertise yourself

Build up a presence online – blog, use Twitter, join something like LinkedIn maybe. Certainly use Facebook if you’re not an old crock like me. Think about a £50 freelance listing on Journalism.co.uk, or even join a professional media organisation such as the CiB. 

8) Using freelance online marketplaces 

There are pros and cons to marketplaces like People Per Hour. I discuss them in more detail here. It’s worth investigating for students I think. 

9) Should you work for free?

Sometimes – pro bono work can get you experience, exposure and contacts. Just make sure you do unpaid work for people who wouldn’t pay you anyway.

And that about wraps it up. Remember, it may seem grim, but there is work out there – you just need to dig a bit to find it. Good luck!

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

Ways to survive the media recession, part 4

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

It’s been a bit of a marathon, but finally we’re getting to the end of the recession-busting advice. 

In the next post, I’ll put together a handy summary, so you don’t have to wade through so much copy to see the bullet points. 

First – A follow-up note on the whole business of advertising yourself.

Using freelance online marketplaces

One of the things I tried at the end of last year was to register on People Per Hour – an online marketplace for freelancers in a wide range of fields, including media-type stuff such as writing and design.

I thought it might be a good way of tapping into a wider market than I could reach through my own contacts, and also improve my ability to pitch for new work.

In brief, I found it didn’t really work for me, but it might work for you, especially, I suspect, if you’re a student or similar. I posted about this at greater length earlier, so it might be worth you checking out the pros and cons here. 

Should you work for free in the hope of getting paid work later on?

When I went to blather at Kingston, I got involved in a discussion with one of the students about doing unpaid writing work. Although he was only in the first year, he’d been enterprising enough to get an unpaid commission to write for a publication (I didn’t catch which one, as I arrived late into the conversation).

Should you do this? Is it exploitation? Does it undermine your fellow journalists who rely on real income from writing to pay the rent? Does it make it easier or more difficult to get paid for your work further down the line?

My take is that it’s absolutely fine to work for nothing – under certain circumstances. The key is to ask yourself what you’re getting out of your pro bono work:

1. Experience. If you really don’t have experience (you’re a student, say), then it pays to get it. The money’s not as important as the skills and ability you develop. Make sure, however, that you get feedback on your work so you can improve. This is especially important for students, but is also valid for professionals if they are moving into a new field, for example.
2. Exposure. This works at any stage in your career. I recently wrote a piece for the members’ magazine of the British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB), because I wanted to get some exposure to the corporate communications market. It didn’t pay any money, but it is a useful thing to point to when I’m talking to potential corporate writing clients, particularly as I have spent pretty much all of my career in business journalism, and don’t have that much corporate work to show off.
3. Contacts. If you want to break into a particular field of writing, it’s worth trying to build up contacts in that world. There are plenty of specialist publications dealing with things such as the arts, say, or other niche areas, most of which are produced by enthusiasts using volunteer contributions. If you put some effort into contributing to these magazines and newsletters, you kill two birds with one stone – you get experience writing in a specialist field, and you also start building up a contacts book of the field’s movers and shakers. And what does a successful journalist have? A solid contacts book. This in itself has a value to potential employers, not counting the clippings you are building up. 

OK, then – there are good reasons to write (and do other media-type work) for free. But what are the downsides?

Primarily, you run the risk that doing work for nothing will actually undermine your ability to get paid work in future. Here’s how that works.

If you want to write music features for something like Uncut, for example, it may not be such a good idea to persuade the editor to give you a payment-free trial. After all, once you’ve given it away for free, why would they rush to start paying you full whack? It’s much more likely that your try-out period gets strangely extended and you end up donating far more than you had planned. And even if you do start getting paid, you may find it’s not at the full rate the “professionals” get.

I’m sure the fine Uncut doesn’t operate so shabbily, by the way (unless you know differently), and I’m sure this approach has worked for some. But logically it’s risky. It’s far better to donate your free writing to media outlets that don’t pay anyway. That means when you come to tout for paying work you have a bulging portfolio, but no track record of giving out freebies to potentially paying clients.

Also, make sure you get some kind of return from the free work. As noted before, if you’re a student wanting to write something for your portfolio and you get a friendly editor or features editor to commission it, ask them to give you advice and feedback in return. Many will be happy – or at least prepared – to do so. (If they’re not, that’s an indication to try somewhere else.)

I’ve been talking about writing, but the principle holds good for other media-type skills. 

If you want to move into web design, for example, then by all means design web sites for free – just make sure it’s not for people that might otherwise pay you. And potential magazine designers can spend many happy hours working up newsletters and leaflets for small charities to hone their InDesign chops. 

The moral? Sometimes you have to give before you can receive. Just make sure you give to the right people.

Next: the handy summary to all this verbiage.

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

Ways to survive the media recession, part 3

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

It’s round three of media survival tips for recessionary times. 

Last time, I talked about Assessing Your Skills, Learning New Skills and Updating Your CV.

Now we’re pretty much focusing on networking, networking and networking. And maybe some advertising. First, though:

Draw up a plan

Be organised. This means putting together some kind of chart to keep track of the type of work you’re hustling for, the contact details of the people you’re hustling and updates of the progress you’ve made. If you’re any kind of freelance journalist at all, you should know how useful this is to do. I use something like this – but anything that works for you is fine. The key thing is to keep track of all your contacts, when you call or email them, and when you need to follow up.

Whose names do you put on your super-organised chart? I’m glad you asked…

Talk to your friends

Mates look after mates, as someone I know wisely said about the latest recession. So the most likely source of work is either direct from people you know, or from their recommendations.

This can be a bit awkward if you’re a Brit, as we tend not to like hustling our friends. It’s a bit like going out for a drink with someone you know and then trying to sell them insurance.

Get over it. You need to pay your rent and the chances are that, if they’re in the media, they’ll understand this, and also may well need someone to do some work for them.

I picked up some corporate writing work recently, after I saw an old friend of mine after a few years. She’d moved into internal corporate communications and I asked, half-seriously, if she needed any corporate writing. The answer was yes – quite a bit of it. And that’s work I wouldn’t have come by unless I’d mentioned it. So be proactive.

The longer you’ve been in the media/journalism, the more people you’ll know in the business. Be thorough – run through everyone you’ve worked with. If they’ve moved on, that’s great, because it gives you a way into different companies. If they’ve been promoted it means they may have commissioning responsibility.

If no one has any work on offer, ask them to pass your name on to anyone they hear of who has. Remember – always ask (but don’t pester).

Contact others

Once you’ve run through your entire list of contacts, it’s time to start cold-emailing. But who to choose?

A good guide can be media job ads sites. I keep an eye on the jobs section of Journalism.co.uk, and there’s also the Guardian, obviously. (When I wrote this, I completely forgot about Press Gazette. Which may be an indication of why it’s now stopped publishing.)

You could also check out Fleet Street Blues – a journalism blog that cherry-picks journalism jobs from the web and posts them with some analysis of what they require in terms of skills, and also has some decent job hunters’ advice. They also pimp me, for some reason, which is nice. 

But try to think laterally too. If you are in the market for corporate work, check out the web site of the British Association of Communicators in Business (CIB) – the professional association for corporate communications professionals – where there are a number of job listings. I’ve seen contract publishing jobs on the CIB site that haven’t been posted on other journalism job sites, for instance.

I don’t really want a job, but you can assume that if a publisher or internal communications department is hiring, it may be in the market for freelance help – especially if it’s finding it difficult to fill a position.

There’s often a few weeks’ production work on offer between the time a sub or production editor leaves and their replacement can join and get up to speed. It can work with writing too – sometimes a staff changeover can mean extra commissioning to smooth the transition.

And, yes, after that you can start trawling through general publishing company listings and sending out spec emails and CVs.

I did once buy a media yearbook with contacts for various publishing companies, but things like that date very quickly, and I found it wasn’t nearly comprehensive enough – it included almost none of the magazines I made my living from, for example.

So, use the web, and use your eyes. If a local magazine comes through your door each week or month, see who publishes it and if there’s some work there. Use Google to scour the web for publishers in different sectors. Search for your interests or specialist expertise and see who’s involved in publishing in that sector.

Draw up your list and start sending out your bespoke, tailored CVs and personalised covering letter according to whatever sector they’re in. Keep meticulous records. Note whom you sent it to and when, and keep careful track of replies. Most will be a “thanks but no thanks”, and many may not reply. Try one follow-up to them, then cross them off if they stay silent.

This kind of thing is a bit thankless and time-consuming, but can bear fruit. I contacted 14 journalism departments and training companies in the new year to try to get some teaching work. Of those, half a dozen responded with a polite “we’ll put you on file”, but two actually offered me some work – and these are organisations I’ve had nothing to do with up until now.

It tends to have best results with subbing/production shifts (a lot of production editors will try out a new sub at least once to boost their roster), less so with writing. But if you’re really stuck for work, where’s the harm? It beats daytime TV at least.

Advertise yourself

A recession is the time you actually need to spend time touting your wares most.

If you do have an online presence (and you should), make sure the address is part of your email signature.

Also consider joining the more business-focused social networking web sites. I know not everyone buys into Twitter, for example (Management Today’s editor thinks it’s “twaddle”), but enough people in the business world like it for it to be a possible route to new business.

I actually got a commission off the back of Twitter because I started following an ex-colleague, and simply managed to remind him of my existence. The investment was free in terms of money, and took very little time (once I’d figured out Twitter’s slightly minimalist instructions).

It may well also be worth spending some of your real, hard-earned money on paid advertising.

Journalism.co.uk charges £50 for a year’s listing in its freelance directory – which gives you something that looks like this. According to one freelance I know who tried it, the listing brought in enough work to pay for itself (though this was some time before the downturn).

I’m still considering doing this – but probably a bit later in the year, as I’m actually too busy right now to justify it. But £50 is just about low enough to punt in an ad just to see.

I’m also still weighing up the benefits of joining the CIB – the British Association for Communicators in Business.

As noted above, the CIB is the professional association of corporate communications professionals. It also has a directory of freelancers, but you need to be a member to join. That costs a heftier £238.50 for your first year (including a slightly irritating £60 “joining fee”) – which is a bit off-putting. But given that the hourly rate for freelance corporate writing starts at £25-£35, the work is more lucrative, so it’s worth pursuing.

Final thoughts next time, with a bit of a round-up in a final post…

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

Ways to survive the media recession, part 2

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

Now for your second slug of recession-busting (NB: slightly updated). 

Earlier, I posted about my recent, slightly panicky drive to bring in more freelance work. In case anyone finds it of any use, here are some of the lessons I picked up from it. Here we go… 

Assess your existing skills

You may believe you’re just a features writer, or a magazine designer, or whatever, but you probably have a wider skill base than you think. 

A friend of mine, for example, is a skilled freelance magazine designer and that’s how she sees herself – so that’s the kind of work she looks for. But actually she’s spent many years doing production for the magazines she’s designed. So she has a whole load of print production/production editing skills that could get her related-but-different jobs. And because print magazines especially are cutting staffing back to the bone, the ability to handle multiple tasks is a big bonus.

This works for words-based journalists too. Can you spell? Do you have a grasp of grammar? Then you can sub-edit as well as write – and vice-versa. And don’t forget that writing doesn’t have to mean writing features. You may not be a news journalist, but if you’re an experienced writer you can also think about writing corporate copy, or PR stories.

Specialise in print? Think about branching out online. And, yes, that requires you to have a few different skills. Which brings us on to…

Learn new skills

If you are a skilled journalist or designer, it actually doesn’t take much to add to your abilities – certainly enough to make a big difference in employability. The usual big leap in the dim past when desktop publishing (DTP) was The New Thing was to learn QuarkXPress and try your hand at page layout. Now, however, the big new thing is the web.

The good news is that, if you’re a print journalist wanting to develop your online skills, you can learn enough initially from the pages and pages available on the web to do this without laying out any money for it. Try a search for “web usability” or “writing for the web” for a start. There’s a host of material available, especially from web usability guru Jakob Nielsen. Here’s a very comprehensive site to start you off.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a big draw for employers at the moment – and luckily the principles are pretty easy to grasp. Here’s an article from the Jakob Nielsen usability site that talks about SEO – it’s pretty good and gets the principle across well.

It’s also easy and pretty much cost-free to get started in online publishing. Try a blog out, or some other kind of online writing, just to prove you can. I posted about this here, and I still think it’s good advice.

The other big draw for employers is turning out to be an understanding of web analytics and audience building. These are business-type skills, and today it’s getting much more important for journalists to possess them. 

Google Analytics offers this in a fairly easy – and free – package. If you set up your own web site or blog you can sign up for Google Analytics and use it to analyse your traffic. It doesn’t work for WordPress.com blogs – your site has to be hosted on your own web server space. But even a simple WordPress blog like Freelance Unbound has a stats page that shows you where your traffic comes from and where it goes once it gets to you. 

If you’re a layout sub or a designer and you want to be able to work on the web, you’ll need to learn new software. Again, do it for minimal cost – download the Adobe Creative Suite, which includes Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks, for a 30-day free trial period and learn as much as you can during that time.

You don’t have to pay out for expensive training courses – but I’d suggest you do pay out a little bit to join Lynda.com for a month or so. It’s crammed with video tutorials for all the media and creative software you’ll ever need to use.

It’s $25 a month – which isn’t a huge amount – but if you want to cheat a bit you can download the tutorials to your hard drive to run through at your leisure. Which means you should be able to cancel after only one month’s subscription and then pretty much use the material for as long as you want offline [disclaimer: I actually haven’t tried this yet, though I am planning to when I have time to learn Flash this summer].

There’s also a load of free tutorials to try out before you subscribe so you can see if the site suits you. Am I a shill for the company? Sadly, no. But I’m open to offers.

It also helps to think laterally. Over the years I’ve spent time in bad bands and I’ve made animated films. This means I’m quite familiar with audio and video editing.

For years that didn’t look like it was any use at all, except as a hobby. But what’s happening right now? Yes – publishers are swarming onto the web and starting to produce podcasts and video interviews to upload to the web.

This video from Broadcast magazine is a perfect example. It’s very competent, but it’s also pretty simple. Broadcast sends its reporters out with a camcorder to record video interviews at the same time as they do an interview for the print edition, using a fairly basic DV video camera set-up.

It’s not high-end television – but it does mean you need to know one end of a camcorder from another, understand the basics of lighting and visual story-telling and, if you’re back on the production desk, how to use FinalCut Pro to cut the whole thing together.

One thing’s for sure, just being familiar with InDesign doesn’t really cut it any more for long-term survival.

What do you do with all your new-found skillage? This:

Update your CV (resumé)

Revisit that old CV (resumé, for our transatlantic visitors) and freshen it up. Don’t just give a list of the jobs or commissions you’ve done, break it down into your different skills and different publishing/media sectors. This could include feature writing, corporate writing, sub-editing, page layout, web design and, in my case at least, teaching/training.

When you’ve done that, make a few copies of the document and start tailoring each one to a specific sector or skill. You should end up with dedicated CVs for each application or enquiry you make. For feature writing, stick all the feature writing skills and commissions you have at the top. Same for sub-editing. Same for corporate writing.

“But they’re the basically same thing!” you cry. No – not from the point of view of the people who may give you work. Show you understand the differences between different kinds of work and it’ll make you look better.

What’s that you’re saying? You don’t have enough skills to have multiple CVs? Go back to points 1 and 2 and start again…

More to come in part 3. 

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

Ways to survive the media recession, part 1

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;

Sometime between September and Christmas last year, my business plan fell apart and I was faced with the grim prospect of actually having not enough money coming in this year.

It happened to a lot of freelancers I know, all at the same time. I started to get a lot of emails along the lines of “I’m going to get a job stacking shelves at Tesco if things don’t improve”.

I say “business plan”. Actually it was a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how things looked for the next six-to-eight months or so. And you know what? It looked pretty good last summer.

I had a six-month stint doing maternity cover on the production desk at a financial publisher working on mags about hedge funds, plus some regular writing work that I could fit in around it. There were steady monthly features for two Haymarket titles, plus some country report-type articles for the kind of advertising supplements that fall out of the Sunday papers straight into the bin.

And then Lehman Brothers collapsed and everything changed.

As I noted before, Haymarket stopped printing one of the titles I wrote for entirely. Promotions & Incentives is still a “web brand” – but there’s no budget for freelance writing anymore.

And while Packaging News is still going strong (well, still going, certainly), it suddenly took all its feature-writing in-house. And the advertising supplement work mysteriously vanished along with the world’s supply of credit.

Which left the production work (and my enjoyable 3.25 hour daily commute into London). But if anyone has been following the financial pages at all, you’ll know that hedge funds have been getting a hammering over the past six months. So much so, in fact, that I was convinced the publisher was in imminent danger of shutting up shop along with the hedge fund industry.

Which left me with only one option – I had to start hustling for work.

It’s not something I’ve had to do a lot of over the past 15 years. Mainly by luck and with a bit of judgement I’ve generally been in the right place at the right time to pick up new work when I needed to. Not this time though.

So I decided to get organised and figure out a plan to bring the work in. And now, because it worked better than I had anticipated, I thought I’d try to boil it down into some general tips for handling recession as a jobbing freelancer in publishing. Because it’s turned out very long, I’m going to break it down into several parts. Stay tuned, as they say…

Part 1;   Part 2;   Part 3;   Part 4;   Part 5;