Another guest lecture tonight. This time it was the turn of Linda Jones, an ex-staffer turned freelancer. And she’s a moderator over on Journobiz.com, a site I owe pretty much all of my career to.
Linda enjoyed a good turn out. Monday evenings as the end of a semester draws near is a busy time for everyone — so to see so many faces was great.
So far this year we’ve had a whole range of great speakers. From famous investigative journalists such as Phillip Knightley to top columnists such as the Times’ Libby Purves.
Yet, in all of those lectures, I’ve never seen students take as many notes as they did tonight. Linda’s approach was to provide more a guest seminar rather than guest lecture — but it was a format that worked extremely well. After all, the students that came to see the talk didn’t want to be told about Linda’s career (I mean that in the nicest possible way), but would much prefer to learn how they themselves could make a success from freelancing. Linda’s talk gave everyone what they wanted.
The Q+A session was the most active we’ve had this year. And tips were flying all over the place. I was so impressed, in fact, that I bought her book. Which contains many great tips, if a little bit focused on Linda’s own specialisms (I wouldn’t, for example, regard mothersatwork.co.uk as a resource for improving your writing knowledge). But, casting that aside, the book is a great resource. Most handy, I think, is the blog checklist found at the back of the book. Each tip is as valid and useful as the next.
So yes, on behalf of everyone at the University of Lincoln, I’d like to thank Linda for a great talk this evening.
No but I have to thank you! Thanks for buying the book and saying such kind things – I wouldn’t suggest http://www.motheratwork.co.uk was a good place to learn anything about writing in a million years but deserves a mention in a list of possible resources as it is a good resource for the many of us ‘juggling’ (don’t you just love that word?) kids with a job, freelance or otherwise.
All I wanted to do was talk about the practicalities and work ethic needed to be a successful freelancer and I’m delighted people found it useful. I’d say that building a specialism can be a key step for all wannabe freelancers and hope my experience may help provide some inspiration. Cheers Dave, take care, Linda.
Oh and less of the Mrs. Hehe. I don’t suppose ‘me and Mrs Aitchison’ sounds the same!
How about now?!
Mrs, Miss, Ms…oh I don’t know
They all have their drawbacks, thanks again.
There we go, haha. Bit more Google-friendly, come to think of it.
Dear Dave,
I can see why your blog is getting a lot of attention. It’s an interesting read.
If I’m allowed a `right to reply’ to your blog, I am a big supporter of the internet and blogging. I believe that it is an addition,though, to traditional journalism and not a replacement. What I meant by `you can’t do that on a google search ‘ is that too much journalism is being done by just sitting at a computer, doing a google search, rather than tracking down primary sources and seeing things at first hand. There’s little that can beat eyewitness journalism.
Just to clarify what I meant about coverage of Afghanistan, it’s not that sending a crew to cover a NATO airstrike on a village would take too long, rendering it out of date, it’s that it would be just too dangerous for a western crew to go remote areas. Often they are in Taliban areas and would be too great a kidnap risk.No news editor would take the risk. As you know, in television, without the pictures, it’s hard to give the story the same weight.
Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed the talk. Keep up the good work on the blog.
Best wishes,JC
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