Earn money from freelance journalism!

You may be suprised to read (if you don't come here very often) that journalism is among the worst-paid of all professions in the UK.

So here's a few ways to get the rent cheque sorted if you're a struggling journo/writer. All it takes is your talent, a few envelopes and a couple of stamps.*

Paul Foot Award
Deadline: 1 September 2008
Categories: Investigative journalism, published in print or online 1 Sept 07 - 31 Aug 08
Prize: 1st (£5000), Runners up (£1000)
Sponsors include: The Guardian, Private Eye
Contact: digby.halsby@midaspr.co.uk

Rory Peck Awards
Deadline: 2 September 2008
Categories: News; Features; Impact by freelance camera operators in TV news and current affairs.
Sponsor: Sony UK
Contact: awards@rorypecktrust.org

Eloquium COPD Award
Deadline: 21 September 2008 Categories: Consumer; Medical; Broadcast
Sponsor: Boehringer Ingelheim
Contact: www.eloquium.org

Plain English Campaign Awards
Deadline: 30 September 2008
Categories: National paper; Regional paper; TV programme
Contact: info@plainenglish.co.uk


*contacts are still everything, sadly. You may have a greater chance of winning the Paul Foot Award if your dad can pass your work onto Ian Hislop's desk, for example.

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Cuba: Not the Land of Freedom

Saw this whilst researching for a piece about internet censorship. While the Cuban government considers the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay a violation of international treaty, there are laws concurrently running which allow authorities to jail members of the public even if they have committed no crime. The irony would be sweet if it wasn't so terrifying.

Oscar Sánchez Madanbecame the 27th independent journalist to be jailed in Cuba, this time for four years, without trial and without a lawyer, for proving to be a "pre-criminal social danger", mainly by writing on Cuban issues on a press freedom website Cubanet.

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My Recent Portfolio

You can see my recent work at the following links. These include: a story about disabled access in Salford, a business feature on Salford City Radio, my coverage of an academic conference on The Fall and an interview with Turkish rock artist.

• Accidents Waiting to Happen

• Radio

• Fall conference

• Paula Darwish interview

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Manchester Media: Salford Online

Salford Online is a news and community website serving, well, Salford.

Long perceived as Manchester's "scruffy neighbour" (see here for the offending article), Salford has for years been playing catchup in terms of coverage and media outlets. Salfordonline attempts to redress this balance, and is looking for new amateur journalists and writers to cover the vast variety of stories on offer.

It's led by editor Brian Everall and a very small (ie single figure) team based in Eccles, but constantly provides high-quality journalism despite this lack of resources.

You may recognise star reporter Tom Rodgers from this site, or from his articles in the Paul Foot award-winning Salford Star (produced by mad scally Stephen Kingston) and on crossrhythms.co.uk!

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Salford University MA Journalism

So, that was it then, i went for my Masters in Journalism interview at Salford Journalism department at Adelphi House, Salford. There's a little picture of it on the right here, in fact.

Adelphi House is a pretty imposing red square block of a building. It's right next to the River Irwell and can look quite pretty on a nice day, as you can see from the pic below.

Don't get confused like I did and head for the Culture, Media and Music Department, which is about 500 yards from Adelphi House in a north-westerly direction, across a car park which is pretty windy, grey and desolate. It's the picture I had in my head of what Salford would be like, all burnt out buildings, flat spaces with very little scenery. A pictorial representation of this is shown in the pictures below.
So, the interview. It really wasn't as difficult or challenging as I thought it should have been, just a little 10 question news quiz e.g.
1) Who is Edward Timpson (Tory winner of Crewe and Nantwich by-election),
2) What do Robert Knox and Ayar Aslam have in common (both teenagers, both recently stabbed),
stuff that had been in the news in the past week or so, and a couple of technical questions e.g.
3) What is a leader/byline/masthead,
4) Who are the PCC and what do they do.

From a group interview I was expecting us to explore an issue and for each of us to take a certain position on that issue. What actually happened: we were asked the one fuckin question I hadn't prepared for, the question that people applying for graduate jobs hate to hear: "So, tell me a little bit about yourself." What do you want to know? I'm quite lazy, I don't learn things very quickly, I hate work, I like to know obscure facts and figures, I'm distrustful of authority and I love my bed. That's about it, in a nutshell.

Tell me a bit about yourself, I dunno, it's such a dissembling question, like the interviewer really does want to know that you like Curb Your Enthusiasm and you and your dad smoke weed on a regular basis, rather than doing the graduate thing and "selling yourself". Well, you say, I've been interested in this course since I moved to Manchester, I've been writing for Company A and Company B and etc etc etc. I really can't be fucking arsed to sell myself any more. I've been trying to hock myself out to companies and for jobs since I left university and it's just completely hollow bullshit. They know it, and you know it, and neither of you are willing to admit it.

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Journalists Pissed off with PR - Official!

The PR vs Journalism war continues. Saw this and had to give you the link. It's a genius article about how not to handle journalists.

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Journalism for students

Manchester University Careers Service are offering a journalism taster this month. The two-day course, “Insight into Broadcasting and Journalism” takes place on Monday 17^th - Tuesday 18^th March (9am-5pm) at Manchester University.

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Manchester Magazines

I've been trying to get in touch with Bob Magazine recently, but mail to info@ and alan@bobmagazine.co.uk has been returned undelivered. Maybe they're just ignoring me, but who running a free magazine would turn down free writers?

Bob has a nice indie-looking ethos: the website is written in fairly witty/ironic style, so I immediately wanted to get involved. If I'm going to write for free, I may as well write what I want, rather than more boring bar reviews. By the way, if writing nighttime entertainment reviews are your thing, and you need some experience for your portfolio, go on to the MyVillage forums to sign up. they're very keen for new writers, and if you live in a city they'll practically bite your hand off.



Bob issue 2 was reviewed by Mancubist, and he wasn't too impressed (see here), but as I know from personal experience, turning out a free, independent magazine on time, and having enough cash to pay the printers is an overwhelming and stressful business.

I also tried getting hold of a copy - apparently issue 3 is out now - but many of the outlets I tried (Northern Quarter bars and shops) had no stock or "hadn't heard of it", so it may have been out of commission for a while. I'll continue to research this, I wouldn't want to sound the death knell if Bob is simply on hiatus.

So I'll wait, and update the status of this article as and when I find out more.

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MA/PGDip Journalism: Salford

I've been getting very excited this week by the prospect of Journalism. Out with writing for fun. In with writing for money. I'm putting together the final thoughts on an MA/PGDip in Journalism at Salford, starting September 2008.

With mediacity:uk open for business in 2011 (check progess of building works here), I hope that this degree will open up some major networking opportunities in journalism in Great(er) Manchester. Training is absolutely essential to becoming a journalist. You need the NCTJ qualifications - along with any subbing/layout, proofing and interviewing skills you've picked up along the way - to be taken seriously.

I did look at other MA Journalism providers in the North West. They included the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) in Preston, which has a very strong website, and an impressive Online Journalism course, and Sheffield Hallam, which came top of the NCTJ rankings recently. Both centres are highly rated and have very positive alumni progress stories.

I have to admit I was less sure about Salford. My initial interest was sparked by seeing that the MediaGuardian columnist and all-round media hero of mine, Steve Hewlett, was a Visiting Professor there. Fourth place in the above NCTJ rankings did Salford's reputation no harm either. But Salford itself, which as I learnt on a fact-finding pootle around Outer Manchester, is not the prettiest place in the world. Salford Quays, the apple in the architects' eyes, is an overwhelming sheen of glass and expensive lighting. The imposing Imperial War Museum and the Lowry, however, do a good job of outshining Salford's more outre architectural behaviour.



Staying in and around Manchester was a big draw, as I've settled in very well here in the leafy paradise of West Didsbury - The Chelsea of the North.

Moving to Manchester was a big step for me; goodbye farms and running over phesants, hello live poetry and big, big gigs. It's a wonderful, complex, dirty, beautiful contradiction of a place, and it's just inspired so many thoughts and ideas since moving in Feb 2006. The arts scene is fookin mint, which helps. Some of the amazing things I've already seen in Manchester include:

Paul Hartnoll (one-half of Orbital) playing electroacoustic techno with full band (electric harp, drums, flute, cello) to an assorted crowd of curious stoners, sharply dressed ex-ravers with kids in tow and beardy middle-aged nutters. All the better for taking place in that achingly divine structure, the Bridgewater Hall.

Finding out a guy I work with in Moss Side is a genuinely talented guitarist and songwriter - Kamal Arafa.

Seeing Whitworth Park in glorious sunshine, and knowing that Moss Side's not the rat-infested crack den the national media claim it to be.

And this, my personal favourite; you don't often see a company willing help itself to acres of bad press. Redstone, building student flats in Moss Side, wagered on a completion date of 2006, a splashed it across a big beige sign:

It is now 2008. Yes, they are still building. Yes, the sign is still there. I have thought about pointing it out, but I don't think they'd buy me a pint for doing so.

Also worth considering was Aphex Twin (9th December 07), playing a blinding set underneath Piccadilly Train Station as part of The Warehouse Project. It was freezing cold, with a smoking ban imposed, but brilliant all the same; the underground space set out for the gig was enormous, cavernous, with films, graphics and animations playing out the jagged brick walls. Luke Vibert weighed in with a funky IDM set which was also very good.

I may also have scored some work experience for the well-reviewed community magazine the Salford Star. To read editor Stephen Kingston's inspirational piece on Salford and community journalism, click here.

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Graduate Jobs with Adfero Manchester

A while back I went for interview at the Manchester branch of Adfero - based in the Portland Tower in the centre of town. Their service is to write tailored news feeds for a variety of company websites, to boost SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) rankings and increase web traffic to their sites.

I thought I'd share with you what I learnt about them, just in case any of you were going for interview and didn't know what to expect. They've got offices in London, Manchester and now Leeds, so chances are if you're a graduate who likes to write, you'll hear of them. Salaries start at around the £16k mark. I've had a couple of mates work for them, and they said that Adfero were slave-driving bastards; but in a graduate journalism job, what do you expect?



Now that Google basically runs the world - when was the last time you searched for something on the net without using it? - companies are having to be more inventive to stop their marketing voices being lost in the crowd. Google's rankings are organised by "page impressions", i.e. the more times people view your webpages, the more ranking points you get, and the further up Google's list you will go. As research (and common sense) tends to show that the general public click on the first five links of a Google search page, competition for those places is very high.

All sorts of companies employ Adfero to move higher up the search engine food chain. I was told at interview that each DirectNews Correspondent, as you will be called if you are successful, has several sites or companies that he/she works for, and your job is to find out or create five or six "news" pieces for the sites under your charge.

So for example, if you are given a Liverpool business site, a staircase manufacturer site and a heating oil information site, each morning you would scour the net looking for news relating to business practices, takeovers and mergers in the North West, how to stop wood from creaking, and the price of oil per barrel in the world markets. You will then re-write these "news stories" in the Adfero format.

Each news story is written to a fairly strict code; Adfero promote this uniformity as a way to avoid potentially damaging third-party references and to keep a consistency of tone to their news stories. The structure (as explained to me by a mate who's now working in Liverpool as a journalist) is as follows:

Each news story should be around 170-200 words in length, you're writing for the intelligent layperson, so you won't have to explain simple financial or trade facts (what the Dow Jones is, for example.)

You will most likely be writing your stories from various sources or 2 or more press releases on other sites, so choose one angle and stick to it. This angle should be the most interesting/shocking/amazing thing about this particular piece of news. There may be a temptation to include too much information in your story; this will unbalance your story and you will run out of time .

Very important: DON'T speculate or insinuate anything in your new stories. Sentences of opinion or conjecture like "Labour have struggled", or "people have found it hard" do not go down well with Adfero. They want objective fact and hard news (facts, figures) as far as possible.
Opinions can be given, but only by people quoted in your story. This avoids anyone getting sued for libel/slander/all those other expensive things.

This 200-word story should play out like this:

1st sentence - The most exciting thing about this piece of news.

2nd - Expand on the above.

3rd - Give some facts and figures relevant to the story, or lead into your quote.

4th & 5th - Two paragraphs of block quotes: can be a respected industry figure backing up your angle, and giving opinion on the way this particular thing is likely to go in future. You can even lay down two block quotes representing both sides of view if you're feeling particularly even-handed. E.g -

Mr Matthews, CEO of Oil Direct said: "Oil prices have been rising year on year due to fluctuations in the world market and the instability spreading through the most productive regions."

Scrumpy, who lead protests on oil prices at this year's May Day riots in London, responded, "What the oil industry says is just shite. Oil has never been more expensive due to board salary increases and overspending on boats, cars and chandeliers."

The 6th & 7th sentences should give your story context; setting it in the wider world. You can do this with figures, relevant facts, or descriptive overview of the industry.

By the way, you'll never get your name on a story as a Direct News Correpondent, all work is copyrighted property of Adfero.

The tests we were given in the interview were a) a sub-editing, i.e. checking spelling, grammar of a 300 word document, b) the above writing test, including 2 press releases and c) your standard psychometric bollocks: 'If a cat relates to a dog as A relates to B, what does C relate to A if C is a horse?'. There's no real way you can prepare for psychometric testing, but you can get a decent idea of what questions will look like by Googling (see?) psychometrics.

One important thing. If you don't know the answer to a psychometric test, DON'T guess. They will take marks away from you if you get it wrong, but not if you leave it blank.

That's a little introduction to Adfero; if I can think of anything else, I'll post it. Anything to help Manchester/Leeds/London writers who can't get a job elsewhere!

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Reuters comes to Manchester (sort of)

Want the important news but can't be bothered to look for it? Click the new links on the right for an instant news feed to Reuters.

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Internet "the future" claims journalist

Yes, this was an obvious conclusion from the Future of Journalism debate, held in John Rylands Library as part of the Manchester International Festival. The two hour session was chaired by Media Guardian columnist and local legend Steve Hewlett, all joviality and bulldog nous, allowing this four way tete-a-tete to flow. The subject focused on Journalism in the "new media age", dramatised with some aplomb by the cheekily journalistic title:

"Has the advent of citizen journalism made the traditional media obsolete?"

The focus fell on the shifting interplay between traditional news-providers, such as the BBC, and their audience. When anyone around the world can write, respond and add to your debate, they asked, what does the journalist offer? Is everyone a potential journalist now? And with no implicit control over what is who writes, or what is written, how can editors steer an issue?
As Comment is Free editor Georgina Henry pointedly remarked, "All of us in the [print] sector are losing readers. Advertisers are shipping over to the web. It's inevitable."
She went on: "You can't have total reign over what people write. The idea's absurd. And in encouraging free debate, you can only have measure of control on your own site, nowhere else."

The thing is, when you allow readers to comment, you implicitly support their viewpoint's validity. And when stuff like this gets posted to Henry's own site, you have to wonder how to control people without the dreaded word censorship:

Noah88 writes:

You can hardly blame the politicians for trying to exploit the media. With the exception of a few, most journalists are lazy incomptent [sic] wankers, only too glad to take a spin-doctor generated press release, copy and paste it into the paper and go to the pub. The miracle is that anyone still pays to read such crap.

I suppose you can excuse some of them on the basis that ratings/circulation are everything, but places like the BBC have no such excuse. Sadly they're usually the worst culprits, shamelessly broadcasting the latest government propaganda in double-quick time so they can get onto the real issues like Big Brother and Paris Hilton.

Yes, this is an extreme example, but you get my point. By allowing free comment, you leave yourself open to one-sided or exaggerated arguments, you affect the balance of your story. Again, inter-connectivity of your debates can be your downfall. By quoting Noah88 out of context, I've done the same disservice to him as he did to the original article. So, how to control the flow of argument and relevance is one of the hardest questions facing editors today.

Again, it was Hewlett asking the most relevant questions: trying to assess in what way "the Great Unwashed" - as he disingenuously described them - could affect the news agenda.

Could there be, and should there be, points when non-journalists can influence the angle of a story? At what point does the news-provider throw its cards in and allow its audience into the commissioning process?

The questions posed by the panel did somewhat conjour up images of shell-shocked, Luddite journos of the old school, warily eyeing RSS feeds, twitching into their typewriters and downing another pint. Journalists have had a long time to get used to the internet; providing multimedia angles to their stories will, I think, be a requirement in the near future. You only have to look at America to see where, technologically, our media - and therefore our journalism - will be.

As homework, I want you all to check out the following links. Honestly, they're ace. Some great video and animation, advice on writing your blog and plenty of "research" for writers to while away the hours with. Enjoy.

http://www.move30.com/- an online community of video- and photo-journalists

www.mediastorm.org/0014.htm - the best animation "cover" of a music video, and some really beautiful in-depth cross-media journalism

www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html - beginner's haven - web writing 101.

www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/al-hawamdeh.html - seminal essay on web journalism

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