Working for The New York Times as a Freelancer

<p>Does someone have any insight on securing work from major news outlets like The New York Times, Newsweek, Bloomberg Businessweek, etc?<br /><br />What are some ways to reach out to these publications as a freelancer, to promote myself to them, and to get paid work (even locally)?<br /><br />I've been focused on reportage and documentary work for about 2 years now but of the few contacts i've made, nothing has really come to fruition. Any advice you have at your disposal would be a step in the right direction for me.<br /><br />Thanks again!<br /><br /><b>Moderator's note: Signature links are not allowed. Please read photo.net's Community Guidelines.</b>

<p>See the first <em>Spider Man</em> movie, for an idea. :)<br>

In industry it is sometimes call "piece work" and it rarely is a good deal for the worker.</p>

<p>Try AP and Reuters, that's where a lot of their freelance stuff is coming from.</p>

<p>I worked for 15 years for newspapers/wires and have worked 15-plus years. If you simply send off your portfolio to the New York Times/Newsweek/Bloomberg main office (physically or electronically) it is highly unlikely to ever be seen by anyone -- they and other major news organizations get swamped by people who want to work for them. What you need to do is make contact at the local bureaus of the Times, AP, etc., (assuming you live somehwere where they have a bureau). AP has a bureau in most statehouses, and the Times has a number of bureaus. For the wires, which generally do have a photographer in a bureau, get to know their chief photographer for the bureau. He/she is the one in charge of hiring stringers. For papers, which probably won't have a staff photographer in the bureau, get to know the bureau chief and let them know you are available for freelance work. You do have to have some actual news photography experience with a legitimate daily newspaper. If you haven't done that, then set your hopes a little lower and get some experience first. BTW, "reportage" is not a word used in the news business. The term is "news" or "editorial."</p>

<p>Rest of that sentence was supposed to say another 15 years in PR working with newspaper/wire/magazine people every day.</p>

<p>I can't tell you how to make a living with photography in news/editorial for any news organization, but I did it in my 20s. I rose to the top of the pile in three or four years.</p>

<p>My first sale was to the New York Times, in Manhattan.</p>

<p>I walked down a street, saw a street funeral in Spanish Harlem where residents raised a cross in the street with the name of the newly slain Robert Kennedy and with RFK's and JFK's photos on it --residents arms upraised.</p>

<p>The Times bumped a staff photo from Washington D.C. off of page 3 to publish that, my first sale.</p>

<p>I just walked into the NYT photo deparemnt the day after RFK was shot and said "I have film', described the scene, they developed it, printed it and ran it. That was my introduction to journalism. It can be as simple as that. </p>

<p>I repeated that with the NY Daily News, Time Magazine, Time/Life Publications, etc. I'd just take photos, walk in and ask where the photo department was, say 'I have film' that I knew might interest them, and they'd look; many times they bought.</p>

<p>It helped that the students at Columbia, a Huge Ivy League campus with then 25,000 graduate students and several thousand undergrads was taken over by its students. I had worked as an assistant (while a student) to two of its vice presidents, and I had warned them of student disaffection, but they ignored me. Too bad for them.</p>

<p>After a couple of weeks being occupied by demonstrators, police came in, batons swinigng, and I was there, camera in hand.</p>

<p>A month after the NY Times sale, a check for $50 came in the mail. For the times that was huge.</p>

<p>Regrettably, I am told, most news outlets pay that or less for most shots,now, 40 years later. $25 is more than likely what you'll get, if you can get them to pay you at all.</p>

<p>I went to race riots in Harlem, but wasn't quick enough to develop my film so none was published (see my portfolio for one). That was after the Martin Luther King assassination.</p>

<p>I learned a lesson: It's the quick and the dead out there. It's what have you have NOW in news, and the next news cycle it's worthless. A week later to the editors you're nobody unless you've been providing them a steady diet of usable work.</p>

<p>If you keep coming up with new stuff, new ideas, they may publish, but they won't pay enough for rent or food, generally, unless your work is extremely interesting and you are well enough behaved they can get along with you. Personality plays a big part in who gets ahead. A good education helps.</p>

<p>I went to Viet Nam, worked my way there on an ammo ship and left to freelance during the war, got shot and medically evacuated (without any Pulitzer or other awards), but returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, hotbed of campus ferment and shot freelance campus riots side by side campus with AP and UPI staff photographers who liked me very much.</p>

<p>They all recommended me to their editors and published some of my work too. There were many contenders for those jobs; I got them because if my behavior as well as talent, I am sure, plus my education.</p>

<p>I was first in line when both wire services had an opening I didn't even know about. (I was trading stocks by that time, sure I would never get hired at any photography job.)</p>

<p>When both outfits offered me a job. I went with AP. I met the guy who took the UPI job two years ago; he retired after 40 years with UPI and absolutely loved it. (I smiled and told him he got it because I turned it down;~))</p>

<p>I saw and met Cartier-Bresson almost immediately after AP hired me as a photographer, on introduction from a fellow AP writer who was a friend of HCB from China.. Based on that, I promptly gave up wire service photography. Cartier-Bresson was giving up because of no work -- television had taken away his market.</p>

<p>I learned a lesson from H C-B's career. </p>

<p>I became an AP writer/editor and shot photos mostly for myself, including major riots, Nixon when he came to town, etc., and some of my stuff AP took and sent around the world even though I was supposedly no longer a photographer. (I took it with my own equipment on my own time, too).</p>

<p>Then I went to Reno as writer/correspondent, and I also took photos, though forbidden by union rules. Some of my work went worldwide, some on front pages, all taken during off hours and unpaid.</p>

<p>Within a year I was transferred to the AP photo headquarters at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, NYC, as a photo editor taking Steve Starr's desk (he went on that year to get a Pulitzer). I worked all the time with Pulitzer winners and their top pros,, and I literally ran the foreign wing of AP's photo coverage. I was 24, and my titular boss, Bodkin, was taking long lunches and relaxing.</p>

<p>AP's worldwide general manager [boss], Wes Gallagher, took me to lunch and told me if I would stay and make a career at AP, he would groom me to become the next AP world wide general manager, giving me appropriate assignments and even foreign postings. </p>

<p>Would I stay? I was one of his advisers by that time, beyond my photo department work. </p>

<p>I just turned 25.</p>

<p>But AP was so CHEAP this boss of all gave me my luncheon check to pay myself. THE AP WORLDWIDE BOSS DID NOT EVEN HAVE AN EXPENSE ACCOUNT FOR A $5.00 HAM SANDWICH AND A COKE FOR AN EMPLOYEE HE WAS ASKING TO BECOME HIS SUCCESSOR!</p>

<p>If I became boss of the AP worldwide, I'd have to be equally cheap. It cannot be better now.</p>

<p>I got four times the salary two months later when I moved to a business magazine writing and taking photos. (I also used to talk twice weekly with Sam Walton, Wal-Mart founder and later, the world's richest retailer). </p>

<p>Business Week offered me an editorship, but I declined, went to law school and founded my own firm; I quit the practice in 1988, over two decades ago.</p>

<p>99.99% of people who have dreams of succeeding at a wire service or newspaper come to the cold, hard truth: These days the newspapers are laying off their best, most experienced photographers and writers, and you are competing against these people for work.</p>

<p>If you're there, ambitious enough, good enough, and cheap enough, you might get work.</p>

<p>If you master the 'new media' or learn how to make a profit from 'apps' or other things, then you might have a chance. If you figure out one APP for an I-Phone that is photo related you might retire off of that; sell one world class photo to a wire service and they may send you $25.00 to $50.00.</p>

<p>Editors, including photo editors usually are (1) swamped with work and don't have time to nurture people, even if they'd like to.</p>

<p>(2) all these people are worried about the long-term viability of their own publications and in the short term also about their own jobs. They're under tremendous pressure to pinch pennies and always wondering 'is this week my last week at work'</p>

<p>In short they're scared to death.</p>

<p>You will get practically nothing for freelance shots from any AP/UPI/Reuters bureau, according to my sources, and same with almost every newspaper in the USA.</p>

<p>Last I heard the San Jose Mercury News, a powerhouse, had been refusing even to look at freelance material.</p>

<p>That was several years ago, and now they're in a greater slump.</p>

<p>LA Times is also in a huge slump; they've been driven into the ground.</p>

<p>NY Times is trying to make digital subscriptions work/their subscriber base is eroding fast and they have had huge staff cuts even though they're acknowledged best in the business by all but Rush Limbaugh conservatives.</p>

<p>Nobody really has time for you.</p>

<p>EXCEPT FOR THIS.</p>

<p>If you are good enough, and if you are persistent enough, if your work is timely enough, and if you are clever enough, at some point people may make time for you, and if you get access, by walking in with film that they need, enough times so that they begin to count on you, if they cannot hire you, they may have recommendations or leads that may help you in some way; so do not overlook these people, a their network possibilities can be great.</p>

<p>Most outlets will look at your photos if they are good and they have a 'hole' to fill', especially if it's big news.</p>

<p>Trouble with a bad economy and declining readership is that 'news holes' are what comes between advertising. News holes are declining as advertising declines, worse, it's not just the bad economy.</p>

<p>1. The bad economy means less advertising, if nothing were changing in the publishing world.</p>

<p>2. But the publishing world is changing; newspapes are becoming outmoded; almost all is available free on-line. Advertising is shrinking at a startling rate and so is profitability.</p>

<p>Few have figured out how to make it on-line. </p>

<p>Photographers are giving their work away for a by-line to major publishers.</p>

<p>That's a poor business model.</p>

<p>I've been approached by the major outlets for my photos but they usually want me to donate them. For instance, the BBC approached me, and the pitch went like this 'Can we use this or that photo we saw on Photo.net? It would be perfect to introduce every week a series we have planned to run each week for several years throughout Britain. We would give you credit.'</p>

<p>I had two questions on that one:</p>

<p>1. What would you pay me?</p>

<p>2. Who would ever see a written credit on television?</p>

<p>Answer: The pay would be putting my name in small print at the end of the program with other 'credits' (probably to run real fast while everyone ran to the toilet between programs.) </p>

<p>There would be nothing to put in my pocket; not even glory.</p>

<p>Once in the 1970s, when I had two stock agencies distributing my photos, my color photo agency had unusual markets. I once got a check for $1,000 in the mail: 'Photo for mural, World Trade Center, your half' is all it said. </p>

<p>I'd get $500 and it a cut line on the check would say 'half page Spanish Encyclopedia, with no other explanation. No one ever heard of the agency, except numerous publishers and this agency sold everything I gave them (not much unfortunately).</p>

<p>But it was real money.</p>

<p>Now stock photo agencies also are penny pinching; some stock photos sell for a few cents apiece not hundreds of dollars.</p>

<p>The BBC is financed by a tax on every televisoin in England, and they wanted me essentially to DONATE my photo, while they ran it every week to introduce an important series and the series might be rerun into perpetuity.</p>

<p>I told them 'No deal'. 'Nice Try'.'Goodby, you're welcome to call again when you have money and not before then.'</p>

<p>If your work is standout and world class great, if you are good at generating publicity, [review how Andy Warhol did it], your name rises to the top of the Google.com searches (PN membership can help), and you get to know people in the gallery, publishing, museum etc., industries, you might possibly make a living from photography.</p>

<p>Few do without a salaried job. Piecework is for the birds, generally.</p>

<p>Salaried jobs are rare and almost extinct; they're disappearing rapidly.</p>

<p>One famous woman about to marry an artist was advised: 'An artist can make a good 'half a living'. </p>

<p>'At best'</p>

<p>These days, most photographers can make none; but there are exceptions.</p>

<p>This is not meant to deter you, only to open your eyes and maybe divert you to a way to make some real money or to use other ways to get experience, but not end up declaring bankruptcy because of some decades old notion of 'how to make it' in the news photography business.</p>

<p>Everything's changing.</p>

<p>If you figure out how to master the changes AND make a huge buck from it, you may be king of the world.</p>

<p>I won't discourage that.</p>

<p>I'd love in the end, to know how you did it.</p>

<p>john<br>

John (Crosley)</p>