Maintaining a Freelance Career: How Journalists Generate and Evaluate Freelance Work

Abstract

This article examines how journalists generate and evaluate their freelance work to maintain their careers. Based on interviews with 52 Swedish freelancers, it illustrates how they respond to precarious working conditions. By drawing on literature dealing with freelance careers, the study shows how journalists navigate the market in their pursuit of jobs that make their work worthwhile. By means of networking, bundling jobs, blurring boundaries between writing and editing, and being jacks of all trades, they can partially influence which kinds of jobs they are offered, and what kind of work they want to pursue in the future. However, most of these practices function as career maintenance, directing focus and effort at avoiding downward career movement rather than achieving upward mobility. The study thus illustrates the difficulties of achieving career progression as a freelance journalist. The article ends with a discussion concerning the possibilities of journalists organizing to improve their working conditions when freelancing.