Freelance journalism vs freelance copywriting: which is best? (The case for journalism.)

Back when I was 12 or 13 I decided to become a journalist. That was the life for me, I thought. Travel. Glamour. Smoking at my desk. Smoking in my car. Smoking in someone else’s car. Smoking on the phone. Smoking on someone else’s phone. Deadlines.

See, I loved Fletch. And I quite liked putting words together, telling funny stories. And I didn’t know what else to do.

So that was that. I was, I announced to the world, to become a journalist.

Then I did nothing about it for the next twenty years. Then I became a freelance journalist for a bit. Then I stopped. What a ride. What thrills. What storytelling abilities I still have. Go me.

Lately I’ve been thinking about going back into journalism. I’ve been just, you know, taking a look at the landscape. Giving it a poke and seeing if it moves.

See, I mostly do copywriting now. And I mostly like doing copywriting now. But there’s something about journalism that keeps drawing my attention. I can’t help myself. I keep giving it looks. Sexy looks using my eyes. Come hither looks. Looks you wouldn’t want to see. Why wouldn’t you want to see them? Oh, I don’t know, probably because they would stir the hell out of you. They certainly stir the hell out of me. I should know, I’ve been practicing them in the mirror.

In fact, I’m off to practice some of those looks in the mirror now.

Right, okay. Done. Anyway, there’s a lot about it I miss. Journalism, I mean – not the mirror. In fact, I DO MISS THE MIRROR, I’m going to go back there in a second. In the meantime, here are a few reasons why I think freelance journalism knocks freelance copywriting into a cocked hat.

1. You get bylines.

Who doesn’t love a byline? Nobody, that’s who. Quite illustrious, isn’t it, having your name and your photo in a paper like … The Guardian. Or The Independent. Or having a zinger-filled bio in the Contributors section of a travel magazine that reads like you dusted it off in five minutes over lunch but actually took hours. I don’t know. I just used to get a kick out of seeing my work in newspapers and magazines in newsagents. Once I was on the 73 bus and someone was reading a piece in a paper about how I nearly died of anaphylactic shock and I wanted to gently slide into the seat next to them and whisper, “I wrote this. Would you like me to read it to you? Ooh, look at this bit where my tongue swelled up so much that I could hardly talk.”

And copywriting? Not so much. It’s slim pickings, byline-wise. I write corporate scripts that get popped into other people’s mouths. I write blogs and newsletters and case studies and social posts and training modules and all kinds of other things that might have traces of me – or might have a lot of my personality pumped into them, poor things – but they aren’t really me as there’s not a photo and my name and a hilarious-yet-time-consuming bio.

Incidentally, the last thing that I wrote that could, at a stretch, be considered journalism, was actually anonymous. Far out, right? It was about playing poker for a living. One of the top rated comments on the piece (out of 240 or so) was:

“There’s so much going on here that’s psychologically bad, it’s hard to know where to start.”

Right then. Onwards.

Psychological badness, earlier.

2. You get to write as yourself.

Look, this isn’t the same as what I was saying above. What I’m saying here is this: as a journalist I wrote, wherever possible, about me. Writing about me was easy. Other people couldn’t do it, not really. And it meant I could get into all kinds of capers. Trying to sell my organs. Playing cards for 30 hours straight. Going for a football trial with Colchester United. Other things.

The good thing about writing about yourself, and about things that have happened to you, in your own voice, is that your work sails through the editing process.

“Well … okay,” harrumph the sub editors. “We suppose that’ll do.” And off it goes, to publishing heaven.

The editing or amends process in copywriting works a bit differently. What happens is that sometimes your work does just sail through. Actually, mostly. Maybe you have to change a word. Maybe you have to clarify something, or approve a change that someone has made but it’s, you know, more or less there and more or less painless.

But that doesn’t always happen.

Other times what happens is that you get five or six people in a document all taking potshots at your finely polished and laboured-over work and so, by extension, you feel like they’re taking potshots at your finely polished and laboured-over self. Which is quite something. Honestly, there have been times where I’ve gone into a document, seen the comments, glanced at the suggested edits, and felt my stress levels rise to that of a Yorkshire detective hunting a serial killer. Sweaty palms. Racing heart. Non-sexy eyes. All over a few comments. Ridiculous.

Anyway, we’re almost there now. Just one more reason to go.

Editing, earlier.

3. You get to join a union.

I love unions. I loved being in the union when I was a postal worker. Out of the other hundred or so jobs I’ve had, I’ve never been in a union. But I love them. And as a journalist you can join the NUJ, the National Union of Journalists. I never did that, by the way, but if I go back to freelancing a bit, and I qualify, then I’m going to totally join the NUJ. Because I love unions.

…………………………………….

And that’s that. We’re done. Look, I’ll be honest: this didn’t turn out how I wanted it to. It probably didn’t turn out how you wanted it to either. Let’s call it a draw.

If I’m being entirely transparent, I lost heart a bit towards the end. I genuinely do want to write for magazines again at some point. And I also want to wrestle with a few hefty features for the FT Weekend, one of my favourite things to buy and read on the planet. But I also glimpsed at the rates freelance journalists are getting and the stories coming out of freelance journalist’s mouths and it made me shriek. Shriek, then scarper back to the sanctuary of freelance copywriting.

Which is up next time. There, we’ll take a closer look at the case for copywriting and I’ll do my best not to waffle on about being all sexy-eyed and that.

Until then.