Is this the time for freelancing?

Is this the time to get into freelancing? According to nearly everyone I've talked to on the inside, the answer is simple: no.

Newspapers have long been on the decline as people are reading less and getting more and more information from the internet. Newspapers and magazines, according to many, are taking less and less freelance, cutting jobs, and generally reducing size and operations.

To add to the problem, the recent financial crisis has added to the hardship of the news industry. According to my elder sister, a former writer for the Associated Press, the decline of the auto industry, a large source of advertising revenue, has hit newspapers hard. Similarly, the popularity of Craigslist has undercut classifieds, another source of revenue.

The effect seems to have reached even publications that I've written for in China. The editor for That's PRD (Pearl River Delta) informed me recently that he was no longer able to accept freelance travel pieces, which means one less outlet for my travel stories.

The outlook is not entirely bad news, though. Websites have been growing, so that anyone looking to freelance should look to place articles with travel websites or other websites with specialized focuses. For example, after a series of my environment articles fell along with the demise of a local art & design magazine, a friend recommended that I try placing them at treehugger.com.

In my experience, websites pay less that paper publications, but opportunities are more plentiful.

In the words of an editor who gave me advice back when I was getting started:

"On the upside: [energy and talent] can take you a long ways. Reporters who pound away and don't take no for an answer almost always do well. But here's the deal and [your sister] will back me on this: you gotta love doing it. it's gotta be a total blast, or it probably won't work, or at least, you won't be very happy."