Could a newspaper be run with freelancers?

Hmmmm .... you could be right, of course. Certainly, the general opinion of journalists is extremely low, so many readers/bloggers assume we do a shitty job at whatever we do. Our higher-ups have presented our job as one requiring little skill for so long that it seems like we've been moving toward "citizen everything" for awhile now. Quality is irrelevant in the bean counter's office.

 

our smallish-town conglomeration of daily papers is, from what I can tell as a full-time freelancer for them (you figure that out), very, very, very close to having no actual staff writers left.

 

That's the situation at our "shop". I feel like a full-timer as it is, the only thing missing are the taxes being taken out of my check and the bennies.

 

I took a magazine journalism class in J-school, and our major project of the semester was to "start" a new publication. And by "start" I mean we pretty much had to do everything but print a first edition. We had to find a place that would print our product, decide what weight of paper we would use, solicit advertisers and prove we could get it done financially.

The start-up publication I chose was a state-wide high school sports weekly, and in my proposal, 90 percent of the writers would have been regional freelancers with a couple full-time office people to put it all together.

So, to answer the topic's question - I think it can work with certain niche publications.

 

Amen.
How can anybody argue with this post? The business is going to be run by citizen journalists. The question is will anybody notice or care when the quality truly sucks. I think they truly may not notice. The sports coverage will all be fan based drivel, probably with very few quotes (the teams will not tolerate these fans interviewing the players in a sickeningly patronizing way; asking for autographs, etc.). But will anybody notice? Great post.