Ten Shun!
There is one job that is most coveted among freelance journalists ( which I spent many years as). This is the gig of columnist.
It’s not hard to figure out why. A top columnist can make a fortune for what appears to be very little work - there are ( or were ) a handful that made six-figure annual sums for a weekly missive. Such top columnists are part of the ‘personality’ of the newspaper, and as such get top dollar. People like Alison Pearson, Tony Parsons and Jan Moir were paid handsomely for appearing every week when I was writing a column. Nowadays the newspaper and magazine industry is much poorer, thanks to the multiplying number of platforms, and columnists like Suzanne Moore and Andrew Sullivan have split off and started their own Substack threads. But even today, a column represents a rare opportunity for a freelance writer - regular, predictable income.
I have worked twice as a weekly columnist, once for three ( or was it four?) years for the London Evening Standard, and six years for The Guardian. The Evening Standard I wrote about whatever was topical that day. For The Guardian I wrote about family life.
I was very grateful for both gigs. But neither we as cost-free as I had hoped. Turns out writing a column is not as easy as it looks.
The Evening Standard column was definitely anything but a breeze. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to read all the other day’s media, then I had a few hours to craft up a lead piece and four other shorter pieces for consumption later in that day’s newspaper.
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