If you’re freelancing these days by choice or by circumstance, there’s a matchmaker looking for you in L.A.
The Journalism Shop, launched last summer by two former L.A. Times staffers as a service for former colleagues at the paper, has opened its doors to other journalists seeking work around the country.
Brett Levy, who co-founded the initiative with Scott Martelle, says The Journalism Shop may evolve into “a kind of a la carte news service.”
With fewer than 30 active writers today, the operation would need significant growth to step into the role Levy envisions. But he says the need for such a service is real.
“When you consider current news services,” Levy explained by e-mail, “they push stories to publishers whether they want them or not. With The Journalism Shop, news organizations only pay for articles requested from our members. Nothing gets written by The Journalism Shop until a commitment is made.
“When The Journalism Shop really gets going, we can pitch a few story ideas each day, allowing publishers to pick and choose only the stories they’re likely to use.”
There’s a lot happening on the freelance front these days.
Demand Media is attracting a lot of coverage about the big numbers projected for its IPO in the Fall and the small paychecks it’s offering writers in the meantime.
At least one other freelance clearing house, Ebyline, is expected to launch over the next month or so. And what looks like a strong conference on the Future of Freelance Writing is already sold out for next month at Stanford.
Here’s a condensed and edited transcript of my e-mail exchange with Levy.
Bill Mitchell: What’s happened in your first eight months?
Brett Levy: Since The Journalism Shop first launched, we’ve had a very enthusiastic response within the media community. Both working journalists and nonworking journalists sent e-mails expressing support for the concept.
To reinforce our success, we bought ads on Facebook and LAObserved. This helped bring us new assignments, mostly in the L.A. area, but a few from national organizations.
Our survey of former Los Angeles Times employees, which ran in December of 2009, also gave us a huge boost. I got the sense that the results kind of shocked the media community in general, and served as an eye opener for nonjournalists. (Links to the survey are still available at the bottom of TheJournalismShop.com home page.)
I also should mention that during the first few weeks, we received a lot of requests from journalists who never worked at the Los Angeles Times. We thanked them, but told those journalists that we were only accepting recent LA Times employees. We saved those e-mails and have recently contacted them.
How many members?
Levy: I count 28 active members, about 5 inactive members and two or three pending. A couple of them, including Bogota-based Chris Kraul, joined in the last few months.
How much work have they gotten via the Journalist Shop?
Levy: Because we don’t track all jobs that come over the transom, it’s hard to know exactly how much work The Journalism Shop brings in. Instead, we created a blog on our home page that showcases the work of our members. Sometimes the work comes through The Journalism Shop, sometimes via other sources. In one case, three members, myself included, received six-month contracts to work for a major non-profit organization (sorry, we’re not allowed to mention the name) and this weekend we received a one-year renewal for two of the members. The third member found a better-paying contract with another news organization.
What’s the response been like since you widened your net on April 21? How many applicants from outside the L.A. Times diaspora?
Levy: We really would like to reach journalists in major cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, etc. Right now, I’d say we have about a dozen applicants, and we built a list over the last year of about 30 names of those wanting to join. A couple are from the recently created Los Angeles Times Diaspora, but many are new to us.
What are you and Journalist Shop members learning about entrepreneurial journalism?
Levy: For me, the work is like riding a rickety roller coaster. So far, most of the time is spent climbing the rungs while wondering if the motor is strong enough to carry us to the top; I’m hopeful that in a few months the easier part will begin.
If there is any one thing I’ve learned: Technology is great, but connections with other people are the key to winning better contracts. Make one customer happy, and they tell their friends.
