Overview of Freelance and Web Writing
The field of journalism provides multi-faceted opportunities for aspiring and fully-trained practitioners to showcase their craft and contribute to the building of a well-informed society. Such opportunities exist in both fixed, salaried and independent capacities in news organisations, news agencies and various platforms on the internet.
This course examines the independent capacities mentioned (freelancing) and how to write effectively for the internet, specifically for the World Wide Web.
A freelance journalist, rather than work in a regular position, sells his stories to interested organisations. Just like a salesman who lives on commission from the products he sells, the freelancer lives off the payments he receives for his stories. As his resourcefulness in regularly breaking valuable stories and credibility grows, he can have steady arrangements with organisations who constantly publish the stories he submits.
News organisations find freelancers helpful in covering distant and unstable regions where it will be too expensive or unsafe to base their regular staff. For example, in the war in Gaza, many of the stories published by major news networks like BBC and Sky News as well as news agencies like Reuters depend on Palestinian freelance journalists.
They know the terrain, embed with Hamas, and so can provide immediate pictures, footage and stories of what is happening on the ground. However, allegations of propagandised coverage have arisen which can be easily balanced by using freelancers on the Israeli side of the war who can embed with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers and provide the Israeli perspective on the war. The best freelancers, though, are those without ideological, ethnic or religious bias.
In addition to contributing to news organisations that will have their work, in this digital age, freelancers have many options for publishing their works by themselves. They can do this via social media, blogs or independent websites with their own personal domain. Most social media, in addition to providing payment for huge engagement on monetised accounts, offer a share of advertising revenue and the opportunity to attract subscribers who pay a fee to sustain one’s work and gain access to exclusive, more comprehensive information in the form of newsletters, deep-dive multimedia reports, long form interviews, etc.
As a result, a journalist can have his work published over time by newspapers like The Punch and New York Post, open a channel on Rumble or YouTube for his videos, have an account on Substack, Locals and/or Patreon (where people can donate to support his work) as well as on conventional social media like X, Facebook and Tik Tok.
In order to navigate these platforms and be recognised, the journalist needs to understand how to write effectively for the Web. In Introduction to Mass Communication, students are taught the characteristics of various media because these characteristics influence how journalists present their work on them. In the same vein, there are ways or principles that can ensure successful Web writing and guidelines for enhancing the visibility and readability of one’s writing on the highly competitive Web platforms mentioned in this post. This course will elucidate those principles and guidelines.
Besides journalism, freelancers can function in related communication fields like content creation, editing, audio and video production, photography, web and graphic design. Due to the multimedia nature of Web content, anyone seeking to work independently ought to have functional knowledge of these areas to operate effectively as a freelance journalist without constantly subletting important aspects of his work or he can create a niche for himself in any of the aforementioned ways that he is particularly proficient in without necessarily working as a journalist. But since this is a writing course, it will focus on how one can blossom in freelance and Web writing, say, as a journalist (print or broadcast), a public relations or advertising professional or even a creative writer.
Discussion Question:
Why would someone do freelancing rather than be regularly employed?
Assignments:
- Write a sentence or two in each case explaining the meaning of the italicised terms in this post.
- Set up an account specifically dedicated to showcasing your work as a journalist and mass communicator on a social medium or blogging platform like Blogger or WordPress.