Zip. Nada. I didn’t even know how to prepare an invoice (when are we supposed to get taught that?!)

So the last year of freelancing has been a roller-coaster of mistakes, mishaps, lost cash, wasted time, frustration. I’ve found myself tied into week long gigs at a scandalously low rate, and also lost out on good commissions because I went in too cheap.

Errors like this are part of the course – and there absolutely no way to get through your first months and years without falling victim. But hopefully these 10 lessons, which I have really taken home with me (OK, I work from home, but whatever) will stand you in good stead!

10 things I wish I knew about freelancing a year ago

.01 The first two weeks are really hard

I remember slipping wildly from pure numbness to feelings of sheer terror. I woke up every morning in a mild panic, not knowing whether any money was coming my way. Most of the days were spent at my desk – which meant entire days on my own, hardly speaking to a soul. The complete loss of structure left me feeling unbalanced and guilty (yes, guilty!) when I hadn’t been productive for an hour or so.

It was miserable – and it’s in these dark hours that your mind starts playing tricks on you, saying things like “this was a huge mistake”; “this is going to go horribly wrong!”; “If you start looking for a full time job now maybe no-one will notice you’ve messed up…”.

So: have a plan for the first fortnight. Fill it with structure, routine, fresh air, exercise, meetings and lunch dates with friends. Your first couple of weeks in a normal job usually ease you in, so why should freelancing be any different?

.02 Time management is even harder

If you’re working at home, and even worse, in your own room, then time management is a tough nut to crack. With no manager, editor or colleagues looking over your shoulder, does it really matter if you slack off for an hour this morning? Does that commission really need to be done right away?

If you get the work done, then it doesn’t matter when you do it…except: I’ve learned completing a structured day, getting all your to-do list ticked off and all the work you set for yourself done, is a really good feeling. Having to shift stuff to the next day, feeling behind and knowing you’ve wasted a whole day really blows. Even if you haven’t had any urgent work to do, as a freelancer, you feel the pangs of a wasted day even harder.

So: get a daily routine. A great quote from Mark McGuinness: “Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” and that’s a rule I like. Ring-fence your most productive time, and devote it solely to your primary work. Ban email, twitter and the like when you’re doing this A-flag work. I no longer answer the phone before 1pm, because mornings are my time (seriously).

Bonus tip: there’s loads of awesome time management advice in Mark McGuinness’ excellent (and free) ebook: Time Management for Creative People.

.03 General assignment freelancing is tough

If you’re going into this with no area specialism it will be tough. Although the flexibility to grab any story and work it is appealing, the highest paid freelancers are the ones with the specialisms: the contacts, the proven insider knowledge, the ability to crunch numbers etc., of a specific field.

Don’t confuse this with my ‘jack-of-all-trades’ approach to technical skills – you need a broad range of those; but they should ideally come together to enhance your offering within a specific area.

So: dig down into a niche and get a specialism. This is especially true of those leaving a general assignment reporter job (as I did) or those fresh out of a generic arts-style degree. Part-time or evening courses, weekend workshops, online courses, or even just self-teaching are affordable and practical ways to build a strong enough expertise in a specific field in a short time.

.04 Being underpaid sucks

And it happens to every single one of us. Especially after a bit of a drought. We accept a gig at a bad rate, sometimes just because we’re flattered to be asked. I’ve even done stuff for people for free before, for that reason – and let me tell you straight up: it’s a mistake. Taking low rates is bad all round. You feel resentful towards your client, unwilling to do extra hours – and you still have money worries! Meanwhile, they treat you less well (you’re cheap for a reason, right?); and it also devalues the market for other freelancers.

So: double your rates for each gig. Sounds crazy? Try it. It’s a popular adage among freelancers in a host of other disciplines. You might think you’ll get laughed out the door, but unless your potential new client chokes on their diet coke you’re probably OK. And even if they do, just come back a day or two later with “it’s lower than my standard rate, but I’m really keen to work with you so let’s do it!” Charging more is also about you taking pride in your work and wanting reward for the standards of your service: if you do charge extra, you’d better make it the best work you’ve ever done.

Bonus tip: if you’re not comfortable with a 100% increase, try a smaller increment.

.05 There is such a thing as ‘not worth it’

Money aside, some gigs just aren’t worth your time. Unfortunately, for the inexperienced freelancer, you only discover the rotten apples by taking a bite. I’ve done jobs which I thought would only take two days, which took 10; jobs which cost me as much as I got paid; and jobs which haven’t paid out for sometimes three, or even six months!

So: learn to say no. Do not accept any job without speaking to your potential client on the phone, Skype or in person first. Ask those tricky questions about expenses and when you could accept payment. In other industries, freelancers do not start work without 50% up front. If you are genuinely unsure, or not in love with the work – then say that magic word: no! Once you’ve said it, forget about it.

.06 Cold-calling does not work

In the early months I tried ringing and emailing news-desks offering my services. To no avail. I pitched lots of stories, and a few got commissioned, but mostly I got the cold-shoulder. About 90% of my work over the last year has come to me. A lot of freelancing guides say you have to do the sales pitch and ‘hit the phones’ – but doing so (in my opinion) puts you in the inferior position, as the struggling independent desperate for work. The easier, less painful and less humiliating way is to make the work come to you.

So: build a brand. The internet is your sales pitch now, and it doesn’t matter who reads it. I’ve banged on countless times before about using social media and blogs to establish your position in the market place. Put together your own portfolio website using free tools like Wordpress, Flavors or Tumblr. For a brand you’ll need a story and mission.

.07 You will need a blog

As well as a portfolio site, you have no excuse not to blog any more. We go on about blogging so much these days, you might think it’s becoming a cliche, or even just an overpopulated place. But the truth remains: a blog is still the cheapest, fastest and easiest way to establish your authenticity, your credibility & expertise within your specialism and bring in cash.

So: don’t hang around. Get a blog today. If you’re unsure where to start, my mini-series on blogging for journalists will get you on your way.

.08 Money matters

There is no regular salary and there is no-one to babysit your account for you. If you’re going to do the freelancing thing, financial expert has got to become one of your many job titles. Being afraid of money is a dangerous thing for a freelancer: being afraid to confirm a rate before agreeing to work, being afraid to invoice for expenses, even being afraid to check your balance, in case it’s bad news. It’s also really easy for all your personal and business finances to get mixed up.

So: separate your finances. One of the best bits of advice I got before starting out was to register as a sole-trader (a legal requirement in the UK) and open a separate business bank account for my freelance work. It was the first thing I did on day one. Any payments I make go into that account, and then each month I pay myself a salary into my personal accounts. This has two great functions: #1. it helps control the ebb and flow, and stops me gorging on a good month only to starve the next; #2 it keeps everything clearly separate, should Mr or Mrs Taxman decide to pay a visit.

Bonus tip: Every time you catch yourself worrying about money: stop. Just think about something else (the weather, football whatever). I’ve saved myself a dozen ulcers by diverting my mind elsewhere…and that head in the sand approach hasn’t ruined me, because I ring-fence some money time each week anyway.

.09 Admin matters too

A not insignificant time in a freelancers’ work is dedicated to admin: filing invoices, chasing late payments, paying taxes, updating websites and LinkedIn Profiles. It all matters – and none of it earns you cash, which is one of the reasons freelancers earn more than full-time counterparts. This isn’t something to let get out of control.

So: ring-fence admin time. I call mine ‘Money Monday’ and I start each week with the cheery task of checking all my accounts, opening bills, sending invoices and updating my accounts. I like to get it out of the way, but you might prefer ‘Wonga Wednesday’ or ‘Finance Friday’. Ring-fencing it makes sure it happens, and then allows you to clear it from your mind as soon as it’s done.

Bonus tip: I couldn’t run such a portfolio career without Google Calendar. It’s a great (and free) way to manage my time in a fluid way, which takes into account changing circumstances. It’s colour coding helps me instantly gauge what’s coming up.

A capture of my Google Calendar from earlier this year

.10 …and freelancing is a mug’s game

OK an odd one to end such a positive post on I know – and I am not calling every freelancer a mug!

But for all its freedoms, freelancing has its limitations. Pulling out a great days work for someone, or producing a great piece of work for them – only to have to wait weeks to get your due reward from it is tough going. As the economic clouds pull in, companies are getting worse and worse about paying up. I know people who have had to camp out in a magazine’s office to get paid.

You are no longer part of the rat-race, but you are still renting your brain out to someone else, on their terms. It can be a career of writing stories about things you’re not interested in, serving people you despise, and getting multimedia you’ve made redrafted to the bone. You can be very comfortable being a freelancer and, dare I say it, even rich. But can you make millions or change the world?

There’s got to be a better way to do it…what do you think?

Next Generation Journalist: Nick Williams from Adam Westbrook on Vimeo.

Photo Credits: Flickr CC Lisa Padilla

Avec près de 200 millions de sites, c’est un océan dans lequel même une marque reconnue peut vite sombrer.

Puis est arrivé un remède miracle qui promettait de résoudre ce problème presque instantanément. Avec quelques pincées de mots-clés et une poignée d’hyperliens, le SEO (Search Engine Optimisation / Optimisation pour les moteurs de recherche) peut booster votre référencement dans Google et vous offrir le fameux sésame : le trafic.

Aujourd’hui presque tous les éditeurs en ligne utilisent le SEO d’une manière ou d’une autre, que cela soit chez les blogueurs, comme c’est mon cas, en installant un plug-in pour Wordpress, ou bien dans les entreprises de presse en créant un poste spécifique pour superviser la stratégie SEO.

Le SEO est donc un outil important pour les éditeurs web, mais à quel coût ?

Pour que le SEO fonctionne

Le SEO fonctionne en mettant l’accent sur les mots-clés à partir d’un article donné pour que l’on puisse aisément faire des recherches sur ces mots, ou encore, aujourd’hui, à manipuler certains mots dont l’éditeur pense qu’ils seront les plus recherchés sur Google.

Selon Mélissa Campbell, une consultante SEO pour Distilled à Londres, cela peut se faire de différente manières. Elle précise:

Le principal pour les moteurs de recherche, ce qu’ils regardent le plus sont les titres (le texte qui apparait en haut du navigateur lorsque vous consultez une page), les méta-descriptions de la page… et le plan du site (qui explique aux robots comment parcourir les pages

Les journalistes et les correcteurs peuvent donc mettre certains des mots-clés dans le titre d’un article, les sous-titres et dans les premiers paragraphes du texte. Ils peuvent même charger l’article de mot-clés et en insérer dans toutes les images qui l’accompagnent.

Cela conduit à craindre que les organismes de presse manipulent leur contenu afin d’obtenir un meilleur référencement dans Google. En d’autres mots: écrire pour Google et non pour le lecteur.

Prenons les gros titres d’un article. Disons que vous avez un nombre de caractères limités pour écrire ce titre en ligne – le site de BBC News, par exemple, a la place pour 55 caractères – et dans cette limite vous devez créer un titre qui introduit le sujet mais qui respecte aussi les règle sur SEO.

C’est un challenge supplémentaire pour les correcteurs au-delà de simplement attirer le lecteur. Mais cela va plus loin, jusqu’au contenu même de l’article. Un post sur Social Media Today l’an dernier résume le problème :

Avec un journal papier, vous parcourez les pages et jetez un oeil à tous les titres. Sur internet, vous cherchez des histoires qui vous intéressent. Le titre que vous voyez en tournant les pages n’a rien à voir avec ce que vous pourrez rentrer comme recherche dans Google Actualités.

Le SEO a changé les articles et de manière plus générale l’écriture journalistique sur d’autres points, en particulier en ce qui concerne l’utilisation des “kickers”: ces mots clés qui sont placés en début de titre et suivis du titre réel.

Lorsque l’information s’inscrit dans la durée, comme pour la récente marée noire dans le golfe du Mexique, certains journaux ont tendance à utiliser des “kickers” afin que leurs articles soient le mieux référencés.  Deux exemples simples: “BP Oil Spill: US orders new emergency plan as seepage detected” dans le Telegraph du 19 juillet et “BP Oil Spill: seepage not a threat to capped well” dans le Guardian du 20 juillet.

On retrouve donc les mots “BP oil spill” dans le titre et les mots-clés et ensuite le journaliste résume le contenu de l’article.

Murray Dick, conférencier à l’université anglaise de Brunel sur le journalisme multi-plateformes, amène de la profondeur dans la reflexion sur les effets du SEO sur le journalisme. Selon lui, l’utilisation des “kickers” pourrait être cloisonnante pour les internautes.

En recherchant ces “kickers”, on obtient des pages de résultats sur les moteurs de recherche qui ressemblent à ces lignes que les instituteurs faisaient recopier à leurs élèves en guise de punition. L’utilisation n’est donc pas forcément facilité et peut même générer de la frustration chez les internautes – et cela peut avoir des conséquences aussi bien chez les agrégateurs que les éditeurs des ces titres.

Surfer sur les recherches

Peut-être que la conséquence la plus importante de l’utilisation du SEO est dans le choix de l’actualité elle-même. Optimiser votre article est une chose, mais pourquoi ne pas directement écrire un article car vous savez que les gens feront une recherche sur son contenu?

Une présentation par les experts SEO de Tunheim Tunners sur comment les journaux devraient utiliser le SEO recommande de “surfer sur les recherches” en regardant quels sont les termes les plus recherchés et d’écrire des article là-dessus.

Par exemple, une recherche réccurente dans le site internet du Daily Mail anglais fais remonter pas moins de 479 articles avec la phrase “teen sex” dans leur contenu, dont “The Truth About Teen Sex” (avril 2005), “Will the teen “sex advisors” be silenced?” (juin 2003) et “Teen sex campaign backfires” (avril 2004).

D’un autre côté bien sûr, cela peut être vu comme simplement répondant à ce que les internautes souhaitent lire, ce qui est dans l’esprit de nombreux éditeurs de journaux populistes. Quel mal y a-t-il à cela?

La fin des jeux de mots

Bien sûr, on sait depuis longtemps que le SEO signe la fin de cette bien aimée convention journalistique : le titre créatif, inventif. Les jeux de mots de fonctionne pas avec le SEO car Google n’a pas de sens de l’humour, et ne comprendrait pas ce dont il est question dans l’article. La fameuse Une du Sun du mois de mai 1982, à propos du naufrage du croiseur “General Belgrano”, qui dit simplement “GOTCHA!” n’aurait aucune pertinence pour les moteurs de recherche aujourd’hui.

Voici donc notre affaire: y a-t-il un danger pour que les journalistes se mettent plus à écrire pour Google plutôt que pour des êtres humains ? Est-ce dommageable pour le lecteur? Pour Murray Dick, selon ses propres recherche, cela pourrait avoir de l’importance :

Les éditeurs qui commandent des articles pour suivre au mieux les tendances du web sans prêter attention à leur ligne éditoriale d’origine risquent d’éroder leur public de base et de diminuer la confiance qui est placée dans leur marque. De la même façon, les journalistes qui écrivent des papiers avec comme objectif premier d’être haut placé dans les recherches frustrent inévitablement leurs lecteurs avec des mots-clés maladroits – et risquent d’envoyer de mauvaises références aux moteurs de recherche.

La consultante SEO de Distilled Melissa Campbell est moins préoccupée.

Le résultat de tout cela pour les journalistes est qu’Internet redevient à nouveau de plus en plus interpersonnel (comme l’étaient les forums à l’origine) et donc très bientôt, vous écrirez simplement pour des gens, ce qui veut dire que vous pourrez retrouver plus de créativité avec les titres des articles. Bien que malheureusement, je pense que les jeux de mots dans les titres sont passés de mode.

Une approche humaine

Tout le monde n’écrit pas pour satisfaire un algorithme de recherche.

Le magazine Slate aux États-Unis défie les conventions sur de nombreux points, il semble passer outre certaines grandes règles de l’édition en ligne.

Premièrement, plutôt que d’utiliser Google pour avoir le plus de lecteurs possible, Slate veut simplement les “bons” lecteurs. L’éditeur David Plotz racontait en juillet au Nieman Lab de l’université d’Harvard :

Notre boulot n’est pas nécessairement de faire de Slate un magazine avec 100 millions de lecteurs… C’est d’être sûr d’avoir 2 millions ou 5 millions ou 8 millions de “bons” lecteurs – les plus intelligents, les plus engagés, les plus influents, les plus habitués au médias. C’est plus attractif pour les annonceurs.

En d’autres termes, ils sont sélectifs en ce qui concerne ceux pour qui ils écrivent – moins de lecteurs est meilleur, selon la théorie, à condition que ce soient les bons lecteurs

Pour ce faire, Slate a choisi de laisser ses auteurs continuer leur propres projets, y compris un article en longueur sur la chirurgie dentaire aux États-Unis. Il semblerait que cela produise des effets  que le SEO ne peut pas produire seul. Nieman affirme que les articles en longueur écrits par des auteurs passionnés ont fait plus de 3 millions de pages vues chacun.

Deux approches très différentes

Il existe donc deux approches très différentes pour obtenir ce bien le plus précieux en ligne : le trafic. Je soupçonne que la solution soit à mi-chemin entre le SEO et le journalisme de haute qualité conduit par la passion. Mais il y a un avertissement malgré tout : aussi attirante que soit l’optimisation des recherches, les journalistes doivent veiller à ne jamais négliger le lecteur pour satisfaire les robots.

Crédits photo cc FlickR mfophotos, bigcityal, Search Engine People Blog.

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Article initialement publié sur OWNI.eu

For a newspaper, news channel or magazine online the undeniable target is traffic. How many people have looked at our front page today? How many people have read that article? Eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs…

With well over 200 million websites out there and counting, it’s a vast ocean and easy for even a familiar brand to sink beneath the waves.

Then along came an enticing alchemy which promised solve that problem almost instantly. With a bit of keyword wizardry and some hyperlinking spells, SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation – can boost your website up Google’s rankings and get you that passing traffic.

Today almost every online publisher engages SEO in some form, whether it’s individual bloggers, like myself, installing a free plugin for Wordpress, or major news organisations creating entire job posts to oversee an SEO strategy.

So SEO is an important tool for news publishers. But at what cost?

Making SEO work

SEO works by emphasising keywords from a given article so they’re easily searchable, or actually manipulating certain words which the publisher believes people will search for in Google.

According to Melissa Campbell, an SEO Consultant with Distilled in London, a publisher can do it in several ways.

“The big things search engines look at are title tags (the text that appears at the top of the browser when you view a page), the meta description of the page… and sitemaps (which tell the spiders how to crawl the pages)” she says.

So journalists and sub-editors can put some of the keywords into the title of an article, the sub-headings and into the first couple of paragraphs of text. They can load the article with keyword tags, as well as put keywords into any images included within the article.

It’s led to fears news organisations are manipulating their content in order to get a better Google ranking; in other words, writing for Google and not the reader.

Let’s take the headline of an article. Say, you have a limited number of characters for your online headlines – the BBC News website, for example, has room for just 55 – and inside this you have to create a headline that conveys the story, but also plays to the SEO rules.

It’s an added challenge for sub editors beyond simply enticing a reader. But it goes beyond that, to the very content of the article itself. A post on Social Media Today last year summed up the problem:

“With a paper newspaper, you flip through all the pages and glance at all the headlines. Online, you search for stories that interest you. The headline you see while turning pages isn’t one you’d ever think to inform your search when exploring Google News.”

SEO has affected articles and journalistic writing in other ways, particularly in the growing use of ‘kickers’ – naming the issue in a headline, and writing the actual story headline behind it.

On running stories, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, some papers started using kickers to allow them to optimise their story for search engines. “BP Oil Spill: US orders new emergency plan as seepage detected” (Telegraph, 19^th July); “BP Oil Spill: seepage not a threat to capped well” (Guardian, 20^th July) are two easily found examples.

This gets the words ‘BP oil spill’ into the headline & keywords and then allows the journalist to sum up the story.

Murray Dick, a lecturer in multi-platform journalism at Brunel University in the UK is carrying out in depth research into the effect of SEO on journalism. He says the consequences of using kickers for the surfing public “can be stark”.

“Searching for these kicker keywords results in search engine results pages (SERPs) that look like the sort of lines teachers used to punish school kids with. This in turn can make for poor usability, and frustration for the surfing public – which could have consequences both for aggregators, and the publishers of these headlines.”

Riding the search wave

Perhaps the most concerning consequence of SEO manipulation is in the choice of story itself. Optimising your article is one thing, but what about writing an article purely because you know people are searching for it?

A presentation by SEO experts Tunheim Tunners on how newspapers should use SEO recommends “riding the search wave”: looking at popular search terms and writing articles on that.

A cursory search through the UK Daily Mail’s website for example brings up no fewer 479 articles with the phrase “teen sex” in them, including ‘The Truth About Teen Sex’ (April 2005), ‘Will the teen ’sex advisors’ be silenced?’ (June 2003) and ‘Teen sex campaign backfires’ (April 2004).

On the other hand, of course, it could be seen as simply responding to what your audience wants to read, a long ethos of many popularist newspaper editors. Is there anything wrong with that?

The end of the pun

And of course, it’s been known for a while SEO could spell the end to that much loved journalistic convention – the creative or pun headline. Puns don’t work with SEO because Google doesn’t have a sense of humour, and won’t understand what the story is about. The Sun’s famous front page from May 1982, reporting the sinking of the General Belgrano, which simply said “GOTCHA!” would have no relevance to a search engine today.

So here’s the concern: is there a danger journalists are writing more for Google’s benefit instead of the human being? Is it damaging the reader experience? Murray Dick at Brunel says his research to date suggests it could be concern:

“Editors who commission copy to satisfy wider online trends regardless of the established news values of their brand, risk alienating their core audience, and diminishing trust in their brand” he told me.

“By the same token, journalists who write copy with the primary aim of ranking highly in search will inevitably frustrate their readers with clunky keywords – and risk sending the wrong signals to search engines.”

Distilled’s SEO Consultant Melissa Campbell is less concerned though. “The implication of all this for journalists is that the internet is becoming much more interpersonal again (like the original message boards), so very soon, you’ll just be writing for people, which means that you can get more creative with titles of articles. Although unfortunately,” she adds, “I think the days of punny headlines may be over.”

A human approach

Not everyone out there is writing to satisfy an algorithm.

Slate Magazine in the US is defying the conventional wisdom in many ways, it seems stubbornly breaking some of the big rules of online publishing.

Firstly, rather than trying to use Google to get as many readers as possible, Slate wants only ‘the right’ readers. Editor David Plotz told the Nieman Lab at Harvard University in July:

“Our job is not necessarily to build Slate into a magazine that has 100 million readers…It’s to make sure we have 2 million or 5 million or 8 million of the right readers — readers who are the smartest, most engaged, most influential, most media-literate people around. That’s more attractive to advertisers.”

In other words, they’re being selective about who they write for – fewer readers is better, goes the theory, as long as they’re the right readers.

To do this, Slate has invested in letting its writers pursue their own passion projects, including one long-form article on US dentistry. And it appears to be doing some magic that SEO cannot do on its own. Nieman claim the long-form passion pieces have attracted more than three million page views each.

Two very different approaches

So two very different approaches to getting that most valuable commodity in the online world: traffic. I suspect the solution lies in a mutual embracing of both SEO and passionate high quality journalism. But there is a warning however: as appealing of the alchemy of search optimisation is, journalists must make sure they never harm the reader experience to satisfy a machine.

Up until recently I thought the problem was revenue and the lack thereof; but that will solve itself organically over time.

And then I realised they’ve got another problem:  it’s one they’ll never be able to solve – and it threatens their place in the future of journalism.

They’re too big.

Sounds strange doesn’t it (after all, size is usually good for a news organisation with a big remit). The insight comes from Clay Shirky, whose blog posts are rare, but always near revolutionary. He talks about the collapse of the great empires of the past: the Mayans, the Romans. They collapsed because they got too big, too complex and couldn’t adapt to a new world.

His modern case in point: the Times paywall. He interprets Rupert Murdoch’s justification for charging online content as this:

Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that

In other words, News International is so big, so complex, so addicted to the exuberant and wasteful systems which it consumed in the 20th century, it just can’t change. So it has to charge customers to help sustain its lifestyle.

Shirky goes on:

In a bureaucracy, it’s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one… Some video still has to be complex to be valuable, but the logic of the old media ecoystem, where video had to be complex simply to be video, is broken

That last point about video is important. Think how many TV production companies are addicted to $20,000 cameras, big rigs, professional lighting, large crews and plush offices in the centre of major cities. They don’t know how to do anything different, and so they charge their clients thousands upon thousands to cover their secret addiction to luxury.

Video Journalism has been around as a cheap alternative to traditional TV news gathering since the 1980s. Why do all the big news organisations still send 2 or even 3 person crews to stories? Michael Rosenblum points out dryly, ABC News’ move to VJing should have been news in the 90s.

Bad times for them. Good times for the next generation of journalists and producers.

How to survive in the future of journalism

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Next generation journalists have a big advantage: we’re not addicted to expensive gear, offices, full time employment or bureaucracy. We know we can do things quick, cheap and simple. We can get impressive results with DSLRs, open source software, a laptop and creative commons media. We’re not ashamed to interview someone on a FlipCam, or embed our video with Youtube.

Do not underestimate the advantage that gives us in the market.

Someone who gets it is media commentator and lecturer Jeff Jarvis. Here’s what he wrote for the Guardian, when the Times paywall was announced:

…in Murdoch’s folly, I see opportunity… As a teacher of entrepreneurial journalism at the City University of New York, I see openings for my students to compete with the dying relics by starting highly targeted, ruthlessly relevant new news businesses at incredibly low cost and low risk

And that’s precisely it. Go in lean, mean and ruthless and start tearing stuff up. But know this: if your career takes you into the fold of the giants, you too will become addicted to their opium. It’s a tough drug to get over. I’ve been lucky in some ways. I’ve only ever worked for tiny, struggling commercial outlets. I thought it sucked at the time, but it meant I always had to do things cheap, and quick – and I never got hooked on the luxurious journalism of the BBC or anyone else.

But the future is bright: here’s Clay Shirky to wrap it up:

It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future

This article was initially published on Adam’s blog

Image Credit CC FlickR Okinawa Soba