Freelance Writing Grows

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By Casey Bukro

Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists

Freelance writing is a swashbuckling sort of business where practitioners live by their wits and guile.

It’s always been a tough business. But for some it got tougher as the newspaper business, which hired freelancers, took a nosedive. Unemployment among freelance writers rose in 2017, then started dropping in 2020.

Statistics show that freelance writers are becoming a growing force in the media, which employs 65 percent of freelance writers in the United States.

The U.S. has 12,994 employed freelance reporters.

Vanishing newsrooms

Newsrooms once were filled with bustling reporters, but those days are vanishing.

Since 2005, more than 3,300 newspapers closed in the United States. Newsroom jobs fell by 26 percent since 2008 in the wake of staff cuts.

Although digital media employment is up, the United States has far fewer journalists today than before.

Remaining news outlets have fewer in-house reporters, but they still need stories to report. To fill that gap, many hire freelance reporters, some of whom might be former newspaper journalists who became freelance reporters. Writing remotely also fits the new media landscape.

Calamity

Sometimes one person’s calamity is another person’s opportunity.

That’s where freelance writers come in. They fill the need for writers, and like writers everywhere, they are likely to encounter ethics issues.

A Colorado freelance writer came to the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists to help her untangle a problem involving a news source and two national media outlets who employ the freelancer.

The freelancer was working on a story for a national media outlet when she discovered that the source for the story she was writing offered the story to a rival national media outlet, which also employs the freelance writer.

Promises

The freelancer believes the source is trying to be helpful in getting the story out, but does not know how the journalism business works. The freelancer had promised to write the story for one media outlet, but not for the rival outlet.

Hugh Miller, the AdviceLine advisor in this case, asked the freelancer how she would approach the issue ethically herself, unprompted by the advisor.

AdviceLine does not tell journalists what they should do. Instead, AdviceLine advisors help journalists with a troubling ethics issue to arrive at their own conclusions.

Responsibilities

“I asked her to focus on HER responsibilities and courses of action, not those of her editors” at the two national news outlets.

“She responded quite quickly that she thought it would be best if she contacted both editors and informed them fully of the situation,” including showing both editors the email the source had sent to the rival news outlet without the freelancer’s knowledge.

“In this way neither editor would be left in the dark about how matters stood,” said Miller. She agreed to finish the story she was writing for the first news outlet, and told the rival news outlet that she could not be assigned to write the story for them because it would be a conflict of interest.

Telling the source

The freelancer decided against telling the source who caused this conflict anything about the discussion with the editors. The editor at the rival news outlet was free to talk about the case further with the source.

“She thought this approach would allow her to most fully discharge her responsibilities to both of her competing employers,” said Miller. “I told her I had little to add to her analysis, and that I thought it a good one, ethically — however, in practical terms, the editors then dealt with the matter. She was relieved to have had the chance to talk it out.”

Having a place to call and talk is one of the benefits of the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists. Journalists with an ethics dilemma often have a hunch about how to solve the problem, but they want to know if the hunch is correct, as it was in this case.

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The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists was founded in 2001 by the Chicago Headline Club (Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Loyola University Chicago Center for Ethics and Social Justice. It partnered with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2013. It is a free service.

Professional journalists are invited to contact the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists for guidance on ethics. Call 866-DILEMMA or ethicsadvicelineforjournalists.org.


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