Freelancing to Stay Alive in Journalism

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15 months ago I left the journalism world, this was a really hard decision. Growing up I routinely watched the nightly news while my mom prepared dinner. I quickly fell in love with the storytelling aspect of a journalists life and the fact they were reporting on something different practically every day. So following my dream to be a rockstar, my life's ambition was to be a reporter. 

In route to that dream I carried a videocamera with me practically everyday, worked for a few news radio stations, PA'd at local CBS is San Francisco and eventually became a small town reporter and T.V. Producer. So why did I drop the dream? Two reasons: my mortgage and the hope to one day provide sole support to family, so my wife can be a stay-at-home mom (her dream).

While I may be out of the journalism game at the moment, there is a simple way to keep the dream alive; freelancing. Back in February, I applied to the local alternative newspaper, Cityview, for a freelance tech columnist position. Having been a longtime fan of CNET, TWIT.tv and Engadget it seemed like a really cool idea. Now, five months into writing columns, I feel like maybe I should have been writing all along. If only my grammar wasn't atrocious...

To this point, I haven't personally been sharing my columns. I was a little concerned Cityview might pull the plug or someone might mount a public campaign to have my column taken down. Considering we're five months in, I guess we're pretty safe. So in case you're not an avid Cityview reader, here are a few screenshots of my column TechTalk. Follow me on Twitter to get weekly links to my work.

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