Event Coverage Highlight

by Chad Bouchard

On May 6, the OPC hosted a panel with four journalists who are using and creating new platforms to build and connect with an audience for their work.

OPC Past President David A. Andelman, a former correspondent for The New York Times and CNN commentator who now publishes Andelman Unleashed on Substack, moderated. He said freelancers who are considering independent publishing should home in on a topic of personal interest.

“You really have to have a sense of a mission, and you have to be driven. Choose something very important to you that is very direct to you. France has always been very direct to me. Elections have been very direct to me. So that’s how I started, with the French elections. And I branched out from there, Andelman said. “If you don’t love it, if you don’t have a passion for it, that’s going to communicate to your readers, to your potential subscribers, even to your paid or unpaid subscribers.”

He added that Substack recommends aiming to have 10 percent of your audience as paid subscribers. Andelman said he has more than 5,700 subscribers around the world, in dozens of countries. He is still working toward the 10 percent target, which could provide a significant income, but urged freelancers to be patient and grow followers.

Laura Bassett, who has reported on reproductive rights abroad, started a now-popular Substack on politics after being laid off as the EIC of Jezebel. She encouraged freelancers to showcase their niche and research platforms before committing to them.

“Don’t be afraid to have a newsletter about something quite specific. I think people really respond to a niche specialty that you are passionate about, that you are specifically knowledgeable in,” she said. “The other thing is I would look at platforms beyond Substack.”

Bassett suggested exploring platforms such as Ghost or Beehiiv.

“Once you’re on a platform, it really gets hard to switch to another one if you already have paid subscribers,” she said. “You’re asking them to reenter their credit card details into another site, and you really get kind of locked in. So, I would say just research all the platforms that are available before you before you start your newsletter.”

Jane Ferguson, the founder and CEO of Noosphere, a monetization platform for journalists, recommended looking for gaps or novel angles in coverage to help find an audience.

“Don’t try to offer up something that’s already super saturated. Don’t be afraid to be niche,” she said. “It’s best if you can enter this world as a part of what you do. It’s going to be more sustainable if you say, ‘okay, I’m going to start something, whether it’s my own podcast or my own newsletter, or photography, or whatever it is I want to sell to subscribers,’” Ferguson said. “It could take two to three years, realistically, to build up a huge audience or even to build up an audience that’s enough to make a living. So, I would encourage people, in order to have the financial stamina for that, to keep doing other things as well.”

Ferguson has worked as a foreign correspondent for PBS NewsHour and others, and spent 14 years in the Middle East, based in Dubai, Kabul, and Beirut.

She added that with persistence, the side hustle can become a primary source of income and also provide a sense of freedom.

“It’s an unbelievably freeing moment for your career. You can’t get fired. You work for yourself. It’s a guaranteed monthly income. It’s extraordinarily freeing, but it takes a long time to earn it.”

Adriana Teresa Letorney is a co-founder of Visura.co, a global platform for visual journalists and storytellers to connect with a global network and license their images directly to buyers.

She said most photographers she talks with struggle to make a sustainable livelihood.

“The reality is that the infrastructures that power the sourcing, licensing and distribution of content right now do not foster fair trade, do not make it possible for you to make a sustainable living,” she said.

“You are put in a situation where you have to balance doing work that is commercial – and some people are very passionate about doing commercial photography – but [if] your passion and your heart is in documentary photography, many have to find something else, an alternative parallel universe in order to be able to continue this work.”

She said many photographers make ends meet by applying for grants, which is time consuming and not sustainable in the long run. Letorney encouraged freelance visual journalists, nearly 70 percent of which are freelancers, to seek existing alternatives and forge their own paths to publish work.

“Never stop trying to disrupt the infrastructure, the foundation that has permeated for way too long. We need change. It is evident that we need change.”

Letorney has recently launched a new documentary short film, titled Disrupted, along with a resource hub that sheds light on the declining state of the media industry and its impact on freelance visual journalists. Read more about the project and watch the film here.

Click the window below to watch a playlist of video clips from the program.