Friday, August 06, 2004
Freelance Journalism meets Match.com
The Economist has an interesting story about the Freelance Marketplace, a website where freelance media professionals get to hawk their skills to prospective employers.
Officially launched this week in New York, the Freelance Marketplace is an online forum where freelance journalists, photographers, illustrators and graphic designers can, they hope, network with editors. For a fee of $14-19 a month or $149-175 a year, a freelancer can post a bio, details of his experience, and clips and other work samples.
Freelancers are ranked in terms of recent clippings and relevant experience. Most seem to be highly qualified—many of them are presumably the victims of recent cullings of staff jobs. Editors can search for contributors by region, experience and specialty. Ellen Piligian, a Detroit-based reporter, was approached to write a regional piece “out of the blue” by Seventeen Magazine soon after signing up.
Another fine example of the Internet reducing search costs!
Officially launched this week in New York, the Freelance Marketplace is an online forum where freelance journalists, photographers, illustrators and graphic designers can, they hope, network with editors. For a fee of $14-19 a month or $149-175 a year, a freelancer can post a bio, details of his experience, and clips and other work samples.
Freelancers are ranked in terms of recent clippings and relevant experience. Most seem to be highly qualified—many of them are presumably the victims of recent cullings of staff jobs. Editors can search for contributors by region, experience and specialty. Ellen Piligian, a Detroit-based reporter, was approached to write a regional piece “out of the blue” by Seventeen Magazine soon after signing up.
Another fine example of the Internet reducing search costs!
