Employed Journalist or Freelancer?

Choosing the right career path for your journalism career is a tough one, whether you gain employment by a newspaper or magazine or go out on your own as a freelancer. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Being employed as a journalist involves a 40 hours a week plus overtime commitment, producing stories for your editor as part of a news team. All your articles must have correct grammar,structure and be completed on time, meeting deadlines for production.

Advantages of employment are that you are granted your four weeks annual leave(depending what country you live in) and maybe a company car, mobile phone and medical insurance, depending on your contract.

As a freelancer, you don’t get these luxuries. Every hour you don’t work, you aren’t producing articles to get paid and if you decide to take that well earned holiday, it means no income either.

But freelancing has its up side, you can work from home, work your own hours and produce any content you like. You can accept/reject job offers and decide your work load. Along with writing, you are also marketing your work. Writing query letters to newspapers/magazines, finding new contacts and simply getting your name out there takes up a large chunk of your working time.

Journalism is a great career and both options make your decision even tougher. You can start off as a freelancer and gather together a great portfolio of work when applying for that big job at a daily newspaper. It’s your own choice at the end of the day.