With just a few hours until 2015, I’m taking stock of the past year. I grew my business in several ways in 2014, with new freelance clients and a great teaching opportunity. Here are a few highlights:
I spent my second year writing for and about healthcare entrepreneurs on the Kauffman Foundation’s eMed blog. As part of my editorial work this year, I interviewed 53 healthcare entrepreneurs about the challenges of entrepreneurship and lessons they’ve learned along the way. You can read the interviews here.
I grew my teaching roster by joining the University of Massachusetts – Amherst as an online instructor in the journalism department. I taught two sections of Newswriting and Reporting. In 2015, I’ll teach the department’s first Health Journalism course (also online).
My freelancing business expanded to include a few new clients: Rolex Magazine, the Guardian US and AOA Focus (article to come in January).
This was my fifth year as a freelancer — and I’m still learning. I tried co-working for the first time. I hosted online office hours with journalism students across the country (thanks, Google Hangouts!). And I was reminded of why face-to-face networking is so important (my Guardian assignment came via a colleague I met years ago).
My 2015 goals include adding more editing projects to my workload and bringing on a few new clients. Here’s to a fantastic new year!
I haven’t been a student for years, but my life still revolves around the academic calendar. My husband is a teacher and I teach college classes, including an online course for the University of Massachusetts that begins Tuesday.
So I tend to see September as the unofficial beginning of the year — and a good time to make sure my freelance business is on track. Here are a few ways I get organized in September and prepare for the last third of the calendar year:
Tally my earnings for 2014 so far and make sure I’m on target to hit my yearly earnings goal
You can listen to the full (30-minute!) segment from the Philadelphia Agenda program here. If you’d rather read the highlights, here are a few takeaways:
Of Camden’s 77,000 residents, about half use a hospital every year. That’s twice the national average. And the top 10 reasons for these hospital visits were all primary care issues (eg. headache, cold, etc.).
Redundant medical testing costs the U.S. healthcare system about $8 billion a year. A health information exchange between the three hospitals in Camden, one of the first of its kind, aims to reduce that expense.
Camden is known nationally as one of the most violent cities in the country. But in a city where assaults make headlines, falls are sending more residents to the hospital than any other injury.
You can learn much more about Camden’s healthcare challenges — and innovations — in my e-book.
I recently unearthed a 2010 interview I did with Joe Grimm of Poynter. Only five months into the full-time freelance life, I was cautiously optimistic about leaving my job at Newsday to pursue self-employment. Here’s an excerpt:
This new gig is: Great — at least for now. I’m not making as much money as I was previously, but I didn’t expect to at first. I love the freelance lifestyle and working for myself, but I’m waiting to see whether I can make a living on it long-term. I’m giving myself about a year before I reassess the situation. I think it takes about that long — maybe longer — to really set up a freelance writing business and get regular clients and steady work.
Four and a half years later, I’m proud I stuck with freelancing even though I didn’t earn the equivalent of my previous salary until several years in. (Now I do, and then some!) The cost of living was less in southern New Jersey than in New York and — more importantly — the ways freelancing improved my lifestyle were worth more to me than a few thousand dollars.
Aside from being required reading for language nerds, You Need to Read This is a worthwhile read for freelance writers. Some of the issues Yagoda tackles are more common in speech than the written word, such as the (over)use of “awkward” and the curious popularity of “what does that even mean?” But the chapters on beginning sentences with “so” and the rise of “logical punctuation,” among others, are particularly relevant to freelance writers.
From sharing an article on Twitter to pitching a new editor to drafting copy for a magazine, freelance writers need to choose the right words for every situation. In other words: you need to read You Need to Read This.
I’m grateful to the blogathon for motivating me to start this blog — and to stick with it for a full month. But I learned that 30 days of nonstop blogging probably isn’t the best method for me. Here are a few of my main takeaways after a whirlwind month:
Some journalism professors tell all of their students to start a blog, but I think you should only blog when you have something to say. I have lots to say about freelance writing, so I stand by my decision to start this blog. But I don’t necessarily have something unique and interesting to say about freelance writing every day. From now on, I’ll stick to blogging when I have something new to contribute.
On the flip side: Forcing myself to blog every day showed me I have more to say than I expected. It helped to have a couple of regular weekly series, so I didn’t have to come up with a completely new idea every day. I never ran out of ideas, and as someone who typically plans things weeks in advance, I liked the challenge of writing spur-of-the-moment posts (like this one).
Because June turned out to be a much busier month than I expected, both professionally and personally, not all of my blog posts got the time they deserved. As I continue this blog, I’ll likely revisit posts, like this one and this one, to expand on those ideas.
I’m excited to continue this blog, but with a much lighter posting schedule. I have a list of upcoming post ideas and look forward to continuing this conversation. Thanks for sticking with me!
Every Sunday this month, I’ll post a link to one of my favorite pieces of nonfiction. These are the stories that make you want to curl up with a cup of coffee and stay put until you’ve finished the last word. Happy reading!
I read some exciting news yesterday: Sarah Jessica Parker has signed on to star in a TV adaptation of Busted, a memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists for the PhiladelphiaDaily News. This will be Parker’s second role as a journalist. She’s perhaps best known as playing the New York City columnist Carrie Bradshaw in HBO’s Sex and the City.
This got me thinking about some of my favorite portrayals of journalists (fictional or otherwise) in film and on television. Journalists on the big and small screen aren’t always accurate or ethical, but they’re certainly entertaining. Here are a few of my favorite portrayals:
All the President’s Men — This is the film adaptation of Woodward and Bernstein’s book about the Watergate scandal and taking down President Nixon. I’m a much bigger fan of the book, but it’s fun to watch “Woodward and Bernstein” unravel the biggest story of the century.
The Wire— Season 5 of HBO’s incredible show about Baltimore centers on local journalists. Created by former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, The Wire portrays newspaper journalism with gritty realism.
Almost Famous — The naive young reporter in this film does just about everything wrong, but Philip Seymour Hoffman is superb as his grizzled editor.
Page One — This documentary goes behind the scenes at the New York Times, perhaps the world’s most esteemed newspaper, as its business model and mission are rapidly changing. Media columnist David Carr totally steals the show.
What are your favorite movies and TV shows about journalism?