[2]

Organizers of a freelancers’ gathering looked for a supportive ecosystem in which to thrive, even as they acknowledged the degraded ecosystem they currently occupy. Photo [3]: 1Day Review via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0 [4]).

Freelance Files: Tending a New Media Ecosystem

By Elyse Hauser

Freelancers are endlessly asked to do more. Pitch more outlets, start a Substack, learn video editing, build a social media following, pick up teaching side gigs, fact-check and copy edit their own work. 

What freelancers aren’t asked to do, it often seems, is to focus on their own biggest needs: rest, connection, growth. The constant pressure to be everywhere and do everything — often on an extremely tight budget — can leave writers exhausted, even demoralized. 

 

The Freelancer's Lounge offered a space

to kick back, have a hot drink and share the

‘real talk’ about how the journalism industry

is — and isn’t — meeting their needs.

 

The Freelancer's Lounge at the 2026 Society of Environmental Journalists’ conference in Chicago offered a bit of space for those often-neglected human necessities. A place for freelancers to kick back, have a hot drink and share the “real talk” about how the journalism industry is — and isn’t — meeting their needs. 

But it was a space for action, as well as connection. And it’s already translated into a big investment: a new $360,000 grant fund for freelancers from Sentient Media (keep reading to find out how you can apply!). 

This tangible outcome points to the benefits of giving freelancers space and support to actively shape the media ecosystem. After all, they’re increasingly the dominant species in it. 

Fertile ground for freelancers

By 2022, over a third [5] of working journalists were freelancers, according to the Pew Research Center (for SEJ’s membership, the freelance percentage is 56%). The numbers have certainly grown since, given the prevalence of layoffs and newsroom closures. Still, journalism events rarely offer dedicated spaces for freelancers.

The Freelancer’s Lounge was an effort to change that, with a shiny new daylong event at this year’s Chicago conference, all about freelancers and their needs.

The concept actually got started at the 2024 conference in Philadelphia, in conversations between a small group of journalists. “We were like, ‘There's no freelance-focused conversation happening at the conference,’ but so many of us are freelance,” recalled Marlowe Starling, freelance journalist and one of the event organizers. 

The team had also noticed that when freelance events did pop up, the focus was often on freelancers helping each other in workshops, in spite of their limited resources and power. So they decided to flip the script, focusing on how the greater journalism world — including staff editors and writers — could help freelancers succeed. 

“A lot of us are like, ‘We're doing everything we learned in these workshops. We've done everything there is to do,” said freelance journalist and event organizer Ethan Freedman. “Like, we've seen all the spreadsheets for organizing our finances and how to write pitches. We know how to do this. There's just things structurally in the world of freelancing that don't work.”

Planting seeds for solutions

Across a designated conference day, the 2026 Freelancer’s Lounge featured lightning talks on how to restructure the journalism industry to be more sustainable, with freelancers in mind. Topics included legal issues and contracts, ethical approaches to nonjournalism side gigs and how editors can better support freelancers. 

Those conversations raised some tricky questions, Starling recalled: “Even if editors don't have the power to directly raise your rates and compensate you the way that you should be compensated, what else can editors do to improve that experience?” 

Luckily, the people in the room offered tangible advice. “I felt like a lot of editors actually showed up,” said Starling. One idea they shared was to split up payments for long projects into installments, instead of one lump sum after publication. Without requiring more money from outlets, that could help make freelancing more financially viable. 

Other conversations throughout the day focused on how freelancers can start their own news outlets or platforms, and how alternative funding models for journalism work. 

And while it can sometimes seem taboo to discuss payment rates at professional events, that important issue was centered in the Freelancer’s Lounge. “I brought up the idea of subsidizing freelance journalism. Because the rates we can get from outlets — every freelancer knows — are really terrible, right?” said Freedman. 

New opportunities bloom

Ana Bradley, executive director at Sentient Media — an outlet that covers factory farming and food systems — was present for some of those conversations. 

“Freelancers in the room were talking about the barriers they face covering issues in their own backyards (things like water pollution or the impact of a nearby factory farm) and, importantly, how people in their community are asking to be better informed on these topics,” she recalled. 

The experience motivated her to apply for a major grant, which allowed Sentient to announce a new Food and Farming Storytelling Fund [6] in September. 

 

‘The conversation in the lounge got me

thinking about how little infrastructure

exists to help freelancers build

their own voice and audience.’

                — Ana Bradley, Sentient Media

 

“The conversation in the lounge got me thinking about how little infrastructure exists to help freelancers build their own voice and audience,” said Bradley. The $360,000 fund will be invested in journalists and other storytellers — especially those who lack the traditional support of a newsroom. 

“There’s no requirement to be affiliated with a newsroom, just a commitment to spending at least half your output on this beat,” said Bradley, referring to the factory farming and food systems that are Sentient’s focus. “Recipients get funding, plus mentorship, legal support and training through our Food and Farming Journalism Network, so they can grow their own platforms and keep doing this work long term.” 

In short, the fund is meant not just to support individual stories, but to fill many of the gaps faced by journalists working outside of a newsroom structure. “I wanted to try something different, a model that invests in people directly and gives them the kind of ongoing support a newsroom would offer without requiring them to be tied to one,” she said. 

Bradley believes the investment is a bright spot of hope in a media landscape that often seems to be dimming. “With climate desks being shut down and mass layoffs, it's easy to despair,” she added. “I don't want us to lose these voices.” 

People interested in applying for the new fund can register their interest at this link [7].

The Freelancer’s Lounge also inspired other ventures, such as Freedman’s upcoming newsletter, The Chicago Firefly, which will cover Chicago’s local environmental news. He said the project was inspired by Freelancer’s Lounge conversations and the need for new independent reporting to refresh local news. Increasingly, freelance journalists are exploring going fully independent in the scramble for sustainable careers.

Keeping the conversation growing

Freedman and Starling mentioned investments in freelancers, such as Sentient’s funds and SEJ grants that bring freelancers to conferences, as steps in the right direction. But they believe it will take a whole supportive ecosystem for freelance journalists to thrive — and it starts with facing the degraded ecosystem that they currently occupy. 

“We see the direction that the environmental journalism community is going, where there's more freelancers. And I think there are two options for what we can do as an environmental journalism community,” said Freedman. “We can talk about how it maybe used to be better and how it's hard. Or we can have a very honest conversation about the way things are heading, the challenges that lots of people in this industry are facing, why people are leaving the industry for reasons that are out of their control.” 

That grounded approach set the tone for the inaugural Freelancer’s Lounge. “What we tried to do with the Freelancer's Lounge, which I hope we can do more of in future years, is just stare the problem in the face, in a way that I think a lot of people haven't been doing,” said Freedman. 

Building a new media ecosystem where freelancers can thrive won’t be easy. But spaces like the Freelancer’s Lounge can help address the seemingly intractable problem.

“What I saw at the Freelancer’s Lounge was community over competition: a group of talented and dedicated reporters who have the potential to build their own audiences and develop their own voices around the issues that matter most to them,” said Bradley. “With some support, both financial and capacity-building, I think these voices could be a critical part of a robust and effective media ecosystem.”

[Editor’s Note: Organizers behind the event also included Alice Sun, Angely Mercado, Meg Duff and Meg McGuire, while other instrumental supporters included freelance journalist Alleen Brown and SEJ’s Executive Director Aparna Mukherjee.]

Elyse Hauser is a freelance writer from the Seattle, Washington, area who specializes in environmental writing. She is co-editor of SEJournal’s Freelance Files column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 11, No. 38. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page [8]. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here [9]. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here [8].