I want to tell you about my experience with the Professional Freelance Journalism Course offered by the Morris Journalism Academy. My ecotourism business was declining and I was looking for a new source of income that would allow me to stay in regional Australia and enjoy the flexibility of working from home. I have always loved reading and writing and a friend had been telling me for years that I should write professionally.
Having never been involved with journalism, I knew there would be a lot to learn about how to make a living as a freelance journalist. I searched for suitable courses and this online journalism course provided by the Morris Journalism Academy seemed to be the one for me. It was hands-on and developed by professional journalists. It would also allow me to complete it at my own pace by correspondence.
The course was not only fun, it also provided a wealth of useful information and, after years of procrastination, it got me started in my new career. Before I started the course, I thought I didn’t need to learn how to write, I just needed some help with the marketing and selling side of freelance journalism. But I ended up learning much more than I anticipated: how to keep coming up with article ideas, how to pitch ideas to editors, how to write as a journalist, how to create a portfolio, how to conduct interviews – and the list goes on.
I benefited from the expert advice of working journalists in the course notes and also from my tutor’s comments about the assignments. Throughout the course, students had to come up with, develop and pitch article ideas. So by the end of my studies I already had a number of projects to follow up on. Moreover, thanks to course notes developed by industry professionals, I knew how to approach, and how to not approach, a busy editor.
As a result, I just had my first feature-length article published in the Australian outdoor magazine Great Walks and received my first pay cheque.
As German is my first language, I’ve successfully pitched article ideas to a German magazine about Australia and my articles have been commissioned for the next four issues. It was good advice provided in the tutorials that suggested to pitch articles internationally and making use of any language skills. I’m now about to research the German, UK and US market for outdoor and travel magazines. I am confident that I will be able to sell some of my articles several times, thus multiplying my income.
My aim is to broaden my subject and write for a wider range of magazines and newspapers. I have a part-time job and always intended to pursue freelance journalism as a part-time occupation. Once I started writing after the successful completion of the studies, I achieved my goal of a part-time journalism career within a few months. I am very excited where this new career path will lead me over the next few years. I couldn’t have done it without the Course and can only recommend it to anyone who wants to start in freelance journalism.
