Freelancing and evolving my journalism career
2019 has been in many ways, a career-defining year for me. Having had to redesign my career path as a journalist, it has meant taking risks and pushing myself into places I had not explored before.
It also represented an evolutionary period in my journalism journey. For the first time ever, I plunged right into freelancing, knowing that the road ahead was filled with bumps and roadblocks along the way.
While I still pursued my next full-time role, freelancing was the best thing I have done for my career to date. It helped me unleash my entrepreneurial streak as I had to carefully think about the stories I pitched to editors as well as the projects I was launching to upskill myself.
What’s new in your story you are pitching?
Early on, I was aiming to pitch for stories that were current within sport, news and careers. It’s very easy to go down that route, but I got a great bit of advice from a BBC Sport journalist and that was to pursue original stories that a staff writer or reporter would have not picked up on.
From that moment, I evolved my approach to pitching. When it comes to crafting a pitch, I brainstorm the beats I want to pursue and create a mindmap of how I want to cover the story. This makes it easier for me to have a structure I will take into account when putting together the pitch.
Has there been rejections with this approach? Yes. I have pitched disability stories in the media about journalists with hidden disabilities or autistic journalists where the subject matter is too niche or a publication did not have a budget to pay for my work.
One bit of advice, always have a backup list of pitches, they are so useful for helping you pitch more stories to editors. My rule of thumb is to pitch at least one or two stories per week to give yourself a chance to work on feature or longform stories.
Evolving my interviewing style
In the past few months, I have conducted more interviews with people from across a wide range of backgrounds and industries in my entire career to date, which has been very beneficial for developing my interview style.
As seen on the main image of this post, I interviewed one broadcaster and journalist who inspired me to take up a career in this industry, Jim Rosenthal. Jim has done it all, a career spanning over 50 years, covering F1, rugby, athletics, football and many other sports.
The interview with Jim Rosenthal also made me reflect on how I conduct interviews to this day. I will spend now up to three days researching the person I’m going to interview but I will not use all the material, the notes are simply there so I can refer to a point or answer being made by the interviewee.
I also managed to do my first-ever YouTube interview with James “Little V” Mills, the man behind Kenny Omega’s All Elite Wrestling entrance song “Battle Cry”. That’s the first time I have interviewed a YouTube content creator, which took me completely outside my comfort zone.
Doing the interview via video call was a new experience for me but the principles I learned in journalism remained the same. While I was happy with the finished product, in future video interviews, I must make sure that I record in full-screen to give a great viewing experience for my audience.
What’s next?
It’s easy to say “What are your next steps you are taking in your career?”, but as someone who constantly evolves and reinvents himself, it’s more about keeping that momentum going and taking the initiative to fully pursue new projects I am working on.
One of those projects is Snooker Data Junkie, a blog designed to help me learn the programming language R through producing data stories about snooker. I’m in the process of producing some content in the next few days and weeks as the snooker season begins very soon.
Also, I’m quite keen to continue building up my portfolio through freelancing. While I have hit a temporary wall recently in terms of pitching, I’m starting to finally get my pitching hat back again. Sometimes it’s great to take a step back and do some reflection before getting back on the horse again.
2019 has given me an opportunity to evolve as a professional journalist and create opportunities that can enable me to do some interesting and intriguing journalism. All Elite Wrestling’s Cody Rhodes once said “Do the Work” and that’s what I’m going to do for the rest of the year.
