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• With fewer opportunities for steady employment in this undeniably bleak landscape, freelancing is becoming the new normal for prospective journalists.
• Squarely in the remit of the digital gig economy, freelancers can expect to “rise and grind” in this new reality.
• This was the main question driving our recent survey into the earnings, contracts and copyright of UK-based freelance journalists.

Funding and income

• Our respondents confirmed that they would hesitate to encourage a young person to become a freelancer nowadays given the limited prospects offered in the profession.
• Low levels of income for freelancers have been attributed to a range of complex factors surrounding new technologies and business models – particularly the move from physical print to digital media distribution.
• But our research suggests that big tech’s use of news content is just one (relatively small) factor among many affecting freelancers’ income.
• As a result, freelancers lose the capacity for future earnings through royalties or licensing fees for republications or adaptations of their work.

Who can be a journalist today?

• Inevitably, the result of an unlivable baseline income and tenuous working conditions is that there are limitations on who actually gets to be a freelance journalist.
• Our findings indicate that freelancers need to rely on other sources of income, either from another job or from a partner to support their career.
• This has created an expectation in the industry that everyone has an additional income, resulting in the “crowding out” of marginalised demographic groups.

This survey was commissioned by the UK Authors' Licensing and Collection Society in collaboration with the National Union of Journalists. The commissioners do not control the analysis of the findings.