About the Freelance Committee
Welcome to the blog run by the freelance committee of the Society of Professional Journalists! Our committee is dedicated to those brave journalists who have chosen to try to make it all on our own. Here you will find a forum where journalists can trade ideas and promote our businesses. Do you have something to say that can help other freelancers? Perhaps you would like to share an idea or recent experience we all can learn from. If you’d like to be a guest blogger, please e-mail Dana Neuts, committee chair.
You also are welcome to contact any of our committee members with questions about freelancing.
Dana Neuts, committee chair (Twitter: @VirtuallyYourz), Email
After a career in financial services, Dana (Blozis) Neuts began freelancing in 2003. Based in Kent, Washington, Dana is a freelance writer and editor as well as the owner and publisher of iLoveKent.net and iLoveCovington.com, hyperlocal blogs. Her work has appeared in many Seattle-area publications including The Seattle Times, South Sound Magazine and Seattle Business as well as national publications including HS Today and American Profile. She is past-president of the award-winning Western Washington Pro Chapter of SPJ, serves as the Region 10 Director of SPJ, serves on the membership committee, and chairs the freelance committee. For more information, please visit VirtuallyYourz.com. Specialties: Business Writing and Editing, Features, Humor, Small Business, Nonprofits, Finance, Insurance, Travel, and Marketing Consulting and Implementation including Social Media.
Michael Fitzgerald, committee vice chair (Twitter @riparian), Email
Michael Fitzgerald has freelanced for nearly 10 years, writing for publications and Web sites including the Boston Globe Magazine, BNet, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc., the New York Times and Yahoo! His most recent awards were 2nd place finishes in the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ 2009 Outstanding Article awards in the Business and Technology and Trade categories. His Web site is www.mffitzgerald.com
Carol Cole-Frowe (Twitter @carolcolefrowe), Email
Carol Cole-Frowe is an award-winning freelance journalist, photographer and blogger specializing in profiles, environmental, science, health, business and travel reporting. During the past 16 years, she has written or edited at several daily Oklahoma newspapers, OklahomaWatch.org, the Oklahoma Gazette, The Associated Press and Agence France Presse. She is immediate past president of the Oklahoma Pro chapter of SPJ and is vice president of programming. She also serves on SPJ’s FOI Committee. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism/professional writing from the University of Central Oklahoma. Her website is www.carolcolefrowe.com.
Paula Pant (Twitter @paulapant) , Email
Paula Pant is an award-winning multimedia journalist specializing in personal finance and entrepreneurship. Her writing has appeared on several premier personal finance websites, including MSN Money and Business Insider, and she is the About.com Guide to Budgeting and Personal Finance. Paula left her newspaper post in 2008 to travel to more more than 20 countries across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, averaging one month per country. She now runs a popular finance blog, Afford Anything, based on the radical notion that money should never hinder your dreams. She is a landlord, a small business owner, a freelance journalist and she continues to travel frequently. Specialties: Money, Personal Finance, Real Estate, Passive Investing, Small Business Management/Entrepreneurship, Budget Travel
Ruth E. Thaler-Carter, Email
Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com, www.communication-central.com) has been a full-time freelance writer, editor, proofreader and desktop publisher since 1984. She is the author and publisher of “Get Paid to Write! Getting Started as a Freelance Writer,” author of “Freelancing 101: Launching Your Editorial Business,” and owner of Communication Central, which holds a conference for freelancers every fall. She has been published locally, regionally, nationally and internationally in newspapers, magazine, newsletters and websites. She also is a chapter coordinator, national newsletter editor and workshop presenter for the Editorial Freelancers Association; chapter president for the Association for Women in Communications; member of the SPJ and American Copy Editors Society freelance committees, among other association memberships; and teacher at Writers and Books and at Empire State College/SUNY.
David Sheets (Twitter @DKSheets), Email
David Sheets is a sports editor and technology writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and its electronic alter ego, STLtoday.com, and is president of the St. Louis Pro Chapter of SPJ. He has worked for newspapers in Missouri, Illinois, Florida and Nevada over the past 28 years, and briefly was a freelancer during that time.
Maya Smart (Twitter @thewritingcoach), Email
After spending six years in the trenches, Maya Payne Smart founded WritingCoach.com to help journalists, authors and other writers build profitable businesses. Her mission is to provide the tools, information and advice that freelancers need to thrive, from marketing basics to advanced business-building strategies. Smart also uses her expertise to teach entrepreneurial journalism courses for the Society of Professional Journalists, the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism and other organizations for wordsmiths. She currently serves on the boards of the Society of American Business Editors & Writers and James River Writers. Visit WritingCoach.com for tips and tools to help you build a more profitable writing business.
Tara Puckey (Twitter @tpuckey), Email
Tara Puckey is a senior journalism student at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and is serving her second year on the SPJ national board as a student representative. She also owns a freelance business, tara puckey freelance, and is very involved in the Woman’s Press Club of Indiana and other community organizations. Puckey lives with her husband, Bryan, and their two young daughters, Alexa and Brooklyn, in Pendleton, Ind. Specialties: military-veterans, benefits, military families; arts-theatre, music and entertainment; features; marketing and social media consulting.
Crai Bower (Twitter @craisbower), Email
Award winning travel and lifestyle writer Crai S Bower contributed over 100 articles in 2010 for more than 20 publications and online sources. He is the travel commentator for NPR-affiliate KUOW and American Forces Radio and was featured in “Seattle 100: Portrait of a City.” www.FlowingStreamWriting.net
Jeff Cutler (Twitter @jeffcutler & @bowlofcheese), Email
Jeff Cutler is a content creator and social media strategist with 21 years experience in traditional journalism and new media. He is the Social Media Trainer for the Society of Professional Journalists nationwide. With interests that range from food (he’s one of the hosts of NomX3.com) to technology (he regularly attends and reports on technology events like CES Las Vegas), Jeff harnesses the power of social media in his job and his avocations. Jeff has advised the University of Massachusetts, the New York Press Association, AIM Mutual Insurance Group, HRM Diet, MetroWest Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Women Business Owners and a number other businesses on how to leverage social media in their operations.
Jeff is a published author; has written for WBUR (NPR Boston), the Boston Globe, New York Post, AutomotiveRhythms.com, Gatehouse Media, MobileMag.com, Technology Review, and other publications. You can find Jeff at jeffcutler.com.
Eric Francis (Twitter @DogtownWriter) Email
Eric Francis has been a journalist since 1990 and a full-time freelancer since 2008. He started his career in the alternative press and eventually found his way to The Times of North Little Rock, Ark., where he spent 11 years as a reporter, editor, and managing editor. Along the way he covered most every beat and became the first two-time winner of the I.F. Stone Award, presented by the Arkansas Press Association for reporting on fraud, abuse, and waste in government. These days his primary focus is feature writing and he’s produced stories about Ernest Hemingway’s Arkansas in-laws, the last of Little Rock’s blind broom-sellers, what it’s like to make a turducken, and the lives of Arkansas’s small-town newspaper editors and publishers. He’s also passionate about obituaries, and a spot on the NYT obit desk is one of the few jobs he’d give up freelancing for.