October Lunch and Learn: Building a niche beat as a freelance journalist

Does it pay to find a beat, and specialize as a freelance writer? Our October Lunch and Learn focused on building a niche beat as a freelance health care journalist. The group heard from guest speakers Liz Seegert and Tara Haelle.

Seegert has been covering aging since about 2010. She had just finished a graduate program in social policy and was trying to figure out what to do. She recognized that Obamacare was emerging and there was a need for health reporters to explain the nuances.

Then, through a fellowship at Hunter College, she did a project on how the digital divide impacted older adults. As part of that project, she attended the American Society on Aging conference and realized just how many health stories could be found in that arena. She parlayed her experience into covering aging for AHCJ as a health beat leader, too. She likes that it's such a broad topic she gets to become an expert on several pieces such as dementia, aging in place and caregiving. "Almost anything can be an aging issue," she said.

Some of her clients include PBS Next Avenue, the American Journal of Nursing, Medscape, Consumer Reports, Time magazine and the New York Times.

Haelle writes frequently about vaccines and pediatric and maternal health. She said having her now 14-year-old son helped launch her beats, as she had questions about vaccines and needed to decide whether to vaccinate her baby. She was in graduate school then, and used her classes to do research and wrote her thesis on vaccines, which involved reviewing studies and speaking with many experts who were pro- and anti-vaccine.

"Journalists have an advantage that the average mom who does her research doesn't have," she acknowledged. From there, she attended an NIH boot camp on medical studies and attended her first AHCJ meeting in Philadelphia, where she attended a workshop on medical studies, which enabled her to cover some other topics like gastroenterology or oncology since she understands how to read studies.

She started a (now defunct) blog about vaccine studies which got the attention of some editors, and met editors at a science conference and the National Association of Science Writers meeting to start her freelance career.

Some of her clients include National Geographic, Scientific American, MDEdge, Medscape, Science News and Texas Monthly.

Seegert and Haelle both said because of their beats, most of their work comes as assignments and they have to do less pitching or can pitch informally to editors they already know. Additional pros: They already have a rapport with numerous sources in those areas, and may be among the first to learn about some new studies or trends.

Other topics that came up:

• Not having a beat can enable you to write about anything, but it can be more difficult as each time you have an assignment on a novel topic you are starting from scratch regarding research and finding sources.
• Write what you know. One person has used her familiarity with conditions like cancer, type 1 diabetes and ADHD affecting family members as a knowledge base to write about those topics.
• Three of the attendees had medical background. One was a pediatric nurse and clinical social worker and therapist who has written for Next Avenue and nursing journals. One was a pharmacist who has done some monographs and other educational writing for pharmaceutical companies, and for WebMD and Medscape. One was a medical student looking to get into writing. One of them had taken writing courses while the others were learning on the job.
• Parenting reporting has gotten more difficult as the paying market has shrunk. There doesn't seem to be as much interest among bigger news media except related to the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting or larger studies.
• Can you write content? Yes, but be wary of the clients you accept, especially if your name is going to be on the piece, or if this type of work would conflict with anything you focus on as a beat. AHCJ has strict rules regarding their members such that everyone must be a journalist working for news outlets, at least 50% of the time. Doing any work pitching stories to media is a no-go for AHCJ membership.
• Always ask sources what else they're working on - it could give you a lead on additional stories to follow up on later.