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Can Freelance Journalists Collaborate?
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Hi folks,
For about six years now I’ve been working as a photojournalist, and also for the past three as a writer, most recently for TIME magazine in Baghdad. I’ve always been motivated by a passion for stories and issues. It always seemed just short of magical that with the right story idea/proposal and lot of luck a major paper or magazine would accommodate or alter their content and allow the person who authored the pitch to take the lead crafting the story (even if it did ultimately get butchered by an editor).
But it’s not a lucrative market, and for a long time I lived hand-to-mouth, badly in debt, paycheck to paycheck. These days my luck has changed for the better but it seems that in most countries in the world newspapers and magazines are truly going down the shitter and interest in foreign news especially seems to be waning and dumbing down.
At the same time I’ve always had some small measure of success reselling stories (text and photos) as packages multiple times around the world, mostly to English-language media, sometimes to non-English language media. While some of the stories I work on are located in a specific culture, many are not, and translate relatively easily into say, Belgium or Germany or Switzerland.
If, as a freelance journalist, you also have two goals, to make a living (to feed and clothe and house yourself) and to execute and disseminate the stories you are passionate about, then this seems to be the next logical step: collaborate with other freelance journalists from different media markets on (a) reselling each others work and (b) working together across platforms / media on stories.
I know, there are countless logistical challenges (who will translate, how will we split a paycheck, where will i find these people) but i don’t think any of them are insurmountable.
I’m trying to start an organization that does exactly this, that’s small in size and dedicated to the idea that good journalism (focusing on features, not news) should be disseminated widely and that toiling alone isn’t nearly as rewarding as collaborating with other individual committed to a core set of principles concerning social justice and journalistic ethics.
I know this sounds pretty vague and flighty, but I doubt I’m the only person thinking along these lines. If you’re interested please shoot me an email, or reply to this post and start a discussion about why something like this could or could not work.
dp
by
Daniel Pepper
at
Wed Apr 23 07:13:03 UTC 2008
(ed. Apr 28 2008)
New Delhi,
India
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I think that journalists can and do collaborate. I also think they more often shit on each other.
But, amazing things happen when journalists act as a community, motivation, ethical regulation, pooling of resources and ideas.
One of the only positive things that I got from my University experience was being part of a community that pushed and helped each other. Now, I am realizing that this isn’t often the case out here in the ‘real world’ but why is that so? It seems to me, that it is in everybody’s interest to help each other out. Is the threat that somebody else is going to ‘steal’ your idea really that big?
Maybe I am just naive, but if so, I think I may want to keep it that way.
Im with you Daniel, any time you want to co-operate, let me know.
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Ain’t the collectives the results of such collaboration?
Daniel do you mean to say that you are interested in opening up a new collective? I can’t get your idea.
Brian I think it is because whenever you become your own organization sometimes it becomes very difficult to differentiate among assets that you need to protect from the ones that you can share publicly.
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i would like to find a virtual meeting place where writers and photographers can join together in literary and visual harmony, melding brilliant ideas into solid and sellable pitches and proposals for magazines and grants.
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Come on people, it all starts from a scratch, every one knows the sales figures for newspapers are dipping down and i guess this is the time for us to think differently but being in our confind premises respectively. with so many collective coming up in every corner of the world its a rats race. and how knows wat all problems were faced before starting magnum….
i would support the concept Daniel, anytime if i qualify the requirements.
my apologies if i said something wrong, i’m still a rookie
cheers
sudhanshu
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Brian, you’re right: journalists do happen to shit on each other a hell of a lot. I think the key to something I’m proposing is found in the proposition that a fine balance between different journalists with different skill sets (photo, video, text, etc) representing different media markets (Germany, Spain, Sweden, France, China, US, etc) located in different countries, yet still relatively small, is crucial.
Santanu: I’m not sure that anything quite like this exists in the world. I’m not sure this would be a collective, a company, a non-profit or what. I think it could take any number of forms. but you’re right – it’s VERY hard to differentiate between assets you share and those you make public. I think there’s an answer somewhere in the technology that the members use to come together and how the (say, web-based) platform allows for some kinds of sharing and not for others..?
Narayan: Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. Sounds great in theory, but not so easy in practice. If it were – why isn’t it happening already on lightstalkers. Or if it is already happening on lightstalkers why don’t we know about it / why are we having this conversation?
Sudhanshu: You’re right, sales figures are dipping down like never before; so it seems that trying to translate work across markets is the way to go. Obviously for photo this is a no-brainer, but for text and video / multimedia, it takes some effort. But the product is worth it, especially if there are buyers.
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i think it is already happening but on a real level (as opposed to this virtual world we are having this dialog). Which is better, really, a photo and writer meet on assignment, get along well enough and keep working together, maybe talk about pitching stories they are equally interested in. But the key is that they know each other, become friends. I would prefer that over advertising myself as looking for a writer.
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If the organisation you say is formed, how are we different from the wire agencies in the world, Reuters/Ap/AFP. Don’t they specialize in this craft of extensively distributing news to every newspaper and country in the world. I may be asking a wrong question as I am not able to understand how does this concept differ from the wire agency concept.
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Hey Daniel, I’ve ben successful at starting a company that collaborates with other journalist and I’m getting some positive interest by journalist in my area and it seems to me that this thing I am doing will work and it might even be profitable for all parties involved. We are very open up front and clear as to where the boundaries lie and exactly what everyone expects from one another. This may be the way of the future for journalism is to ban together and cover more ground as a collective group and possibly share in the wealth. I’ll keep you posted as far as how we’re doing. but it does seem to be off to a great start.
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Hi Daniel and Nick,
Could you please explain a bit in detail about the idea? How it is different from what we see already is there? How it functions? What it tries to achieve in a more materialistic terms?
Really I can’t understand the concept you people are speaking about.
Regards
Santanu
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