On Your Own: A Guide to Freelance Journalism - Society of Professional Journalists

If you know how to write a story, produce a broadcast segment or webcast, edit copy or cover a meeting or beat, you have the basics of freelancing already in hand. The skills you learned in the newsroom, on assignment, on the desk or in journalism classes are the mainstay of your career. That’s neither more nor less true for freelance journalists than for those who work for a media organization.

For the most part, the language of your profession is the same whether you freelance or work for someone else. In journalism, a head is a head and a lead is a lead (or possibly hed and lede, depending on how old you are). Sources are the same, editors are the same, copy and clips are the same.

Freelancing does have its own vocabulary, though. Here are some terms you will come across in the freelance world that you may not encounter otherwise, and some terms that have somewhat different meanings.

Client

The “client” is the person or company that pays for your work. Whether your assignment comes from the news or features editor, the business section or the state desk, your client is the publication or publisher. Your client list will include City Magazine, The Daily News, WRDF or Yahoo! News, not the editor or news director. Sometimes the client is an individual — a writer who hires you to edit a manuscript. Most often, though, it will be a publication, broadcast station or website.

Gig

A “gig,” loosely defined, is a work engagement. The term can refer to a single assignment to cover a meeting or write about a topic, or it can be a regular assignment to produce news or features. You might hear freelancers say, “I got this great gig blogging for …” or “I need to line up some new gigs so I can fire my bad client.”

Niche

“Niche” is a marketing term used to help prospective clients find you in the crowded field of freelancers. Generally it refers to your “beat” or area of expertise. More specific areas are “narrow niches” — for example, you might cover Medicare, not the broader area of health care. In addition to beats, niches can derive from the kind of work you are best at — investigative reporting, blogging, data journalism or narrative storytelling, to name a few.

Pitch

Most queries include at least one “pitch,” or story idea. Pitches also can become part of a freelancer’s relationship with an editor. They should be specific enough to tell the editor what angle you intend to take in the story, not just a general idea. For example, instead of pitching a new “Getting around town” blog for a local news site, your pitch would include three or four routes you propose to write about.

Query

“Query” letters are used to approach editors and publishers with story ideas. Freelancers send them through email as well as snail mail, but their intent is the same either way: to ask for work. If you haven’t approached the publication before, the query becomes a vehicle to introduce yourself and share some work samples with the editor or publisher — printed if you send snail mail, either attached or linked if you write the query into an email.

Last updated: January 20, 2015

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