Freelance virgins need to sign up for an NUJ course
Hugh Kerr bemoans the tricks that newspaper editors used to avoid paying him for his contribution (Gripe, May/June 2008). You confess you’re a freelance “virgin”, Hugh, but don’t say whether you’ve been on the NUJ’s Getting Started as a Freelance course.
There you would have learnt that you have to provide editors with a ’product’ that will fill a recognised ’slot’. If they want news, give them a news story; pitch a feature to the features editor; and if you want to write opinion pieces, then get yourself commissioned to write a regular column.
But if you just fire off ripostes at random, you’re doing no more than the rest of the letter-writing public, and you can’t expect to be paid for that (even if you ARE an NUJ member!).
My advice: sign up for the Getting Started course (excellent, if Humphrey Evans is still leading it); or get yourself a blog if you want to pontificate.
Melanie Thompson
Tring, Hertfordshire
On first reading I thought Hugh Kerr’s Journalist essay (Gripe May/June 2008) had been commissioned by the union’s training department to illustrate the theme “how not to freelance”.
Certainly when he decided he would try his hand at freelancing he seems to have made some basic errors. Only a supremely confident “virgin freelance” would choose the Edinburgh Festival as a launch pad for a freelance career with an article on the Simon Bolivar Orchestra. Surely an Edinburgh resident and noted opera buff like Hugh must have known that festival time Edinburgh is more than amply supplied with experienced cultural writers and likely to be and exceptionally tough market for a new freelance.
I hardly think anybody will be surprised that Hugh was not paid for material carried on what are op ed pages and presenting this as sharp practice stretches reality. On the vexed topic of payment surely it is a basic requirement to get agreement about fees for work before you uncap the biro?
Such an approach and much else is covered in the union’s advice and courses for aspiring freelances and Hugh might find much there which will help him avoid further negative experiences in his freelance career.
Finally I must correct the mistaken impression he conveys that he lost his job after the SSP was defeated In last year’s Scottish elections.
In fact he ceased to be the SSP’s press officer in 2004 and subsequently threw in his lot with the Solidarity party following Tommy Sheridan’s split from the SSP. Why he chooses to omit this fact is a matter for him.
For the record I was the SSP’s press officer during the election.
Ken Ferguson
Dundee