Festival Chronicling…baa!

Baa! The Festival Chronicler

Next week is my first official job as a Festival Chronicler.

Both Agent Pete and I are chronicling the Swindon Festival of Literature which starts this bank holiday monday (at 5:30am, yikes!) for twelve days.

We’ll be reporting, gossiping, photographing and generally telling everyone about our experience.

It’s a new initiative where we’ll flexing our blogging, tweeting and facebooking muscles to the max, writing about twenty-nine events in under two weeks!

See the blog: www.festivalchronicle.com
www.facebook.com/festivalchronicle
www.twitter.com/festchronicler

How to make money from writing

On the very first day of my very first work experience placement on a newspaper, an old hack warned me that no-one goes into journalism for the money.

He was right too – the wage of a jobbing journalist was, and continues to be, appalling, especially when compared to the renumeration expected by similarly-skilled professionals, like lawyers and accountants.

In fact, one of my newspaper colleagues took the job of office cleaner to supplement her income, and it wasn’t uncommon for trainee journalists to have to balance the coverage of parish council meetings with bar work.

‘No-one goes into journalism for the money’ became, or perhaps always had been, an industry mantra that I kept hearing throughout my adventures in work experience land, my training, and my career in newspapers.

So can a budding writer make money from journalism..? Actually, I think they can.