In an age of shrinking newsroom budgets and an ever-faster news cycle, working as a journalist can be stressful and frightening.
So why are so many Australian journalists freelancing?
Caroline Zielinski started her journalism career at The Age, where she worked as a breaking news reporter, before moving on to roles with News Corp and AAP.
But now she works as a freelancer and has found her niche writing on “meaning and work life” for publications such as Guardian Australia, The Age and the ABC.
“Being a freelancer is really great, but you have to think about the kind of content you want to write in order to live,” Zielinski says.
Secure work as a journalist in Australia is harder to come by than ever for those entering the industry, with a 2018 survey finding three-quarters of students were not employed in their chosen field after graduating.
The MEAA states that 1200 of its 5000 media section members are freelancers, a trend echoed in both the UK where 35% of journalists are freelancers and in the EU where only half of the journalists have a full-time contract.
More and more Australian journalists are employed in precarious work. But for many, the lifestyle and freedom of being a freelancer are tempting.
But most freelancers in Australia, rather than being forced into the role by the lack of jobs in the market, are choosing the precarity voluntarily.
A 2016 study at the Queensland University of Technology has found over half of freelance journalists were motivated by lifestyle choices, such as a work-life balance, flexibility, and being their own boss, and 40% because it afforded them more creative freedom.
Another 13% cite being made redundant from a position at a media outlet, and only 10% settling on freelancing because they could not find another job.
Advances in technology are allowing freelancers to work more easily without an office or a newsroom’s support.
High-quality video and audio can be recorded with affordable hardware or even a smartphone, and stories on global issues can be researched, written and filed from home.
For Zielinski, creative freedom is the best part of the job, however, she takes on some other communications and PR work to allow her to “write for passion”.
“I’m quite selective in what I write, I only write what I enjoy,” she says.
“That’s a luxury, but it’s something that I’ve had to work hard [at] to figure out what to do.”
Not everyone has this luxury, with many freelancers feeling underpaid for their work or having to work – often on stories they’re not interested in – around the clock to pay the bills.
Technological advances are threatening the work-life balance that many freelancers have created for themselves, with a constant Twitter or other social media presence necessary to stand out and stay relevant in a busy marketplace.
The immediacy of online publishing means stories that a journalist could spend 24 hours mulling over in the past, such as post-match reports or responses to government announcements, need to be written with haste and outside of normal working hours.
The coronavirus pandemic is threatening the newsroom diversity that freelance journalists need to survive.
The global COVID-19 pandemic is also threatening freelancers’ creative freedom, at least in the short term, as the niches they have created for themselves are overshadowed by the virus’s dominance of the news cycle.
Portland-based freelance journalist Leah Sottile had “stacked [her] year with a series of projects that would be intellectually and financially rewarding” before COVID-19 laid her plans to waste.
Zielinski is encountering a similar trend and a few editors rejecting her stories, while reassuring her they are good story ideas, are conceding “it’s just not the right time”.
But it’s the trademark adaptability of a freelance journalist that has kept Zielinski with plenty of work, despite the circumstances.
“Some websites and publications want just coronavirus content, others just want non-coronavirus content,” she says.
“It’s a really busy marketplace. Editors don’t have a lot of time, so you have to really understand what each editor is looking for, and the nuances of each publication.”
