Freelance journalist Jem Collins won the Outstanding Freelancer Award for ushering in “overdue transparency, fairness and pay improvements” for freelance journalists.
The Outstanding Freelancer Award is IPSE’s search most talented self-employed people in the UK, designed to recognise and celebrate the innovation and excellence of freelancers in the UK.
Jem founded Journo Resources to empower freelance journalists with insight, training and resources that can’t be found anywhere else, with a focus on supporting marginalised groups.
By only listing jobs with stated rates of pay, Journo Resources has prompted dozens of national media organisations to publish salaries and rates of pay for the first time, with more than 170,000 people having consulted the database so far.
Journo Resources has also trained more than 6,000 journalists at its workshop series, whilst providing a real-life pitch library and a mentoring fellowship that has seen 90% go on to secure future work.
Having juggled the business as a part-time venture alongside other freelance contracts for five years, Journo Resources is now a sustainable business with a diverse income stream.
The judges said that Jem showed an “impressive knowledge of an industry’s challenges and shortcomings” ushering in “overdue transparency, fairness and pay improvements to support the livelihoods of too many marginalised, side-lined but ultimately talented writers, who are now in a much better place because of the winner’s easy-to-use, crowd-sourced and growing online infrastructure.”
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Twitter: @Jem_Collins
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LinkedIn: Jem Collins
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