Ask the cubicle expat: Does doing corporate writing make me a hack?

February 1st, 2008

Tiffany asks: A freelancer more experienced than me — she writes for national glossies like Gourmet, Smithsonian, etc. — told me that I needed to be careful about how much commercial work I take — especially copywriting — because editors at national magazines won’t see me as a “real” journalist/writer if I do a lot of corporate work. Basically, she scared the bejesus out of me, since right now as I’ve started off, all I’ve been doing is corporate work since it has paid well and allowed me to transition out of 9-to-5 work. Do you think her warning is something to heed? I know I want to eventually do some feature writing, and hopefully for national pubs eventually, so I’d like to not make a big mistake at the beginning of my career that can derail my plans.

I answer: This is a great question. My initial thought? Poppycock! You need to do whatever you need to do to pay the bills now. And as long as you’re not writing copy for serial killers, I wouldn’t worry too much about what some future magazine editor thinks of what you worked on two or three years ago. Think of all the people with staff jobs who move in and out of PR/corporate/copywriting/journalism work. Happens all the time.

But just to make sure I’m not on crack, I checked in today with an extremely successful freelance journalist I know and asked about her career trajectory. About a decade ago, she had a full-time marketing job. About three years ago, she had a part-time marketing job to pay the bills while she freelanced on the side. Now she’s a full-time freelancer with a column in a major metropolitan newspaper that’s sometimes syndicated throughout the country, three book deals, monthly clips in a couple of the leading online news media outlets, and clips in a dozen huge-circulation national newsstand pubs.

You can reinvent yourself as a writer at any time you decide to, so forget those killjoys who tell you what you do today will seal your career fate for the next decade or three. There is this bit of snobbery in certain writing sects, probably because the competition is fierce and, quite frankly, all print and traditional media are being pushed out by new media, blogs, even citizen reporting. Which means old-schoolers can be a bit territorial. (A newspaper editor I met at a party recently tried to tell me that freelancers aren’t real journalists. Considering how much newspapers have been downsizing lately I thought she might want to consider a bit more humility.)

To your friend’s credit, she may have been trying to warn you against writing some highly visible PR/marketing copy for businesses/megacorps that would cause a conflict of interest with the pubs you want to write for in the immediate future. Say, if you’re trying to get into Saveur but you’re writing press releases for Sur La Table.

At some point, you will have to make time for the journalism work if you want to break in, and to be taken seriously you will have to make room in your schedule to pitch and accept assignments. And you will have to be careful that you don’t work for any corporate client that might be considered a conflict of interest with the topics/pubs you write for/about. Otherwise, you may scare some editors off.

So start thinking about what pubs you want to write for (what topics? which readers? which niches?). Once ready to approach them, make sure you’re not or haven’t recently written about one of their advertisers or anything else that could be considered a conflict of interest. When you get serious about approaching publications, you’ll probably only tell them about your publishing credits anyway — not that you write the newsletter for your local supermarket chain. You want to keep your “consulting work” on the down low because (a) it’s not relevant, and (b) it might make you seem like a hack — unless the fact that you’ve written software manuals for five years makes you highly qualified to write reviews of new digital products for Cnet.

In case there was any doubt, many freelancers do part-time jobs, corporate work, teaching work, contract work, and other money-in-the-bank gigs. Otherwise, many wouldn’t survive. Then there are those freelancers who write for pubs like the New York Times and top glossies who can only afford to do so because their domestic partner picks up the financial slack. Others rely on their savings from their former corporate gigs (lawyer, communications manager, etc.) to fund their newfound high-profile journalism careers. So reinvention — and having other pursuits outside journalism — is entirely possible.

Ultimately you have to do what’s right for you. And if you want to be a full-time magazine freelancer, I say you start pitching small magazines now and start trading up as soon as you can. Why wait?

Entry Filed under: Ask the Cubicle Expat