The unbearable lightness of freelancing: a journey through the precarity of European journalism

Between €70 and €200 in Bulgaria; between €200 and €250 in Croatia; between €25 and €125 in Poland; between €50 and €130 in Italy; around €100 in Albania: these are the minimum and maximum rates that a freelance journalist can hope to earn per article in each country. They are not official figures, but numbers that have emerged from the work of Pulse project journalists (the first part of this series was published here).

While In France there is a fee scale for freelancers, most European countries leave it to the market, to the media outlets, to the good – or bad – judgement of the editorial staff, leaving workers at the mercy of a declining and unregulated market, with no fixed minimum sum that would allow them to refuse excessively low fees and prohibit newspapers from offering them.

Describing the situation of freelancers in the Czech Republic, Petra Dvořáková of Deník Referendum says that while “there is no data on average salaries, 83 percent consider their salaries insufficient. Another big problem is ‘false self-employed’ journalists, who are registered as self-employed, but generally work for only one employer.”

The average salary in the country is around €1,611 gross per month. “Most journalists I know earn less,” says Dvořáková, adding that “freelance rates per article are unsustainable: between €40 and €200 per article, even if it’s a report that takes a week to write.”

And what about legal assistance? “The few times I’ve received any, it was from some of the bigger media outlets and only at the final stage, after sending text, photographs or multimedia content,” explains Martin*, a 32-year-old journalist specialising in migration dynamics and human rights. “It’s obvious that the organisation is more interested in protecting its reputation than safeguarding the freelancer,” he adds.

Low paid, highly motivated

“Journalism is far from well-paid, and there are no established channels for funding independent investigations or on-the-ground reporting,” says Bulgarian journalist Emilia Milcheva. “This is why social networks are flooded with podcasts: it’s much easier to inundate the public with narratives financed by anonymous sources than to give people information backed by in-depth research.”

After 30 years of experience with several national newspapers, including as editor-in-chief, Milcheva has been freelancing for five years, writing regularly for Deutsche Welle, Euractiv and Bulgarian newspapers. She points out that “the media rarely feels obliged to make editorial policies public. What happens is that many newspapers operate as private companies, and freelance journalists often have to comply with the demands of advertisers and the interests of owners.” As for support in case of legal action, Milcheva confirms its absence, and says that “this not only puts freelancers in a vulnerable position, but also increases the general sense of uncertainty, and undermines public trust in the media.”

The salary of a journalist working for a newspaper or news site in Sofia is between €750 and €1,000 per month, while TV journalists earn between €1,250 and €2,500 per month. Earnings can occasionally reach between €3,000 and €5,000 per month for the most experienced journalists in management positions, but these are extremely rare cases, as Krassen Nikolov of Mediapool explains.

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‘We give a voice to those who don’t have one, but we forget about ourselves, when in fact we should be joining forces to fight for our rights’ – Anna*

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Nikolov adds that journalists in Sofia earn less than the average salary in the city, which is €1,150 and rising. Coupled with low pay, the workload, responsibilities and risks of the profession make it an unattractive career choice for young people. The lack of trade unions or any sense of journalistic community also plays a large part in Bulgarian journalists’ sense of insecurity, Nikolov concludes.

Sotirios Triantafyllou, president of the Panhellenic Federation of Journalists’ Unions and university lecturer, explains the current situation to Efsyn: “Journalism has been hard hit by the economic crisis, which has led to salary cuts and job losses. Although unemployment has now fallen, salaries remain low and there are no collective-bargaining agreements in the private media sector.” Greece also has a particularly severe problem regarding attacks on journalists: “One of the main issues facing journalists is SLAPPs (lawsuits intended to censor or intimidate journalists), and there are ongoing concerns for the safety of journalists in the performance of their duties, up to and including cases of murder (e.g. the cases of Sokratis Giolias and Giōrgos Karaivaz).”

Fake freelancers and hybrid freelancers

So, how do freelance journalists actually make a living? For many, quitting is not an option. There are those like Sara* who manage to scrape by, hopping from piece to piece while applying for grants, and being rejected more often than not. There are those who also do “something else” in parallel with freelancing. Miteva*, who freelances in Croatia, produces audio documentaries, lectures in a journalism faculty, leads media education programmes, collaborates with international journalism teams, and works with scientists, artists, activists and international organisations. “If I only wrote, it would be difficult to make a living,” she explains. For Martin* too “it is absolutely necessary to have another source of income.” He and many of his colleagues are “forced to do odd jobs in restaurants, bars, cafés, or work at the front desk in hostels and hotels, or as chefs, waiters, or even as musicians or artists.”

In Albania, Joni* explains that there are journalists working “in communications, translation, on projects with NGOs, or producing content for international media outlets.” Anna*, a reporter in Poland, had to ask her parents for help “when I was earning around €215 for a month of full-time work, and my rent was 250 euro and I couldn’t take another job at the same time.”

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In Bulgaria, Albania and Greece too, freelancers always have to do something else, according to the professionals interviewed. Moreover, no one is counting such workers, or even knows how to do so, since there is no clear and standardised definition of their employment status, let alone an association or register.

The first step in counting is counting yourself

These ambiguities, these ill-defined boundaries, leave room for equally blurred labour relations. You are only a freelancer at the end of the month when you send out an invoice (always addressed to the same clients). In fact, you have the duties, burdens and rhythms of a hired worker, but none of the benefits. “Everything occurs without a contract and without insurance,” Joni points out, “which makes it even more impossible to support yourself with freelance journalism alone in Albania.” Accustomed to navigating transparent but immeasurable vulnerability, European freelancers look toward an uncertain future.

According to Vesela*, a 27-year-old Bulgarian freelancer specialising in data journalism, “the democratisation of content could promise a great future, but it all depends on how editors and people in positions of power look at freelancers.” Martin* sees a bleak future for himself and his colleagues “without a job or a parallel activity”, and would like to see dedicated organisations for each city or each country that “help regulate payment standards, appreciation of work and respect for contributions.”

“We give a voice to those who don’t have one, but we forget about ourselves, when in fact we should be joining forces to fight for our rights,” says Anna*, who is fearful and pessimistic about the prospect of artificial intelligence. “It will replace us, as will the commercial channels on TikTok and Instagram.”

Joni also raises the issue of pluralism and quality of information: “In Albania freelancers are under threat, but the growing interest of international media and independent platforms could lead to formal contracts, decent pay and respect for copyright.”

None of these three essential conditions currently exist in Croatia, where Miteva* calls for “standardised rates, like there are for translators, so that freelancers don’t have to negotiate rates from scratch each time and settle for pitiful pay.”

According to the Croatian journalist, one potential solution is to include freelancers as public sector workers, in the same way that some independent artists have their health and pension contributions covered by the state. “Instead, journalism is not recognised as a public good,” she points out.

During the industrial revolution, the physicist Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) said “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” More and more freelancers are now saying the same thing. Does this spell revolution? Perhaps, but only if freelancers are not too busy trying to survive. As Miteva* says, “sometimes you don’t really have time to stand up for your rights.”

*The names are fictitious.

🤝 This article was produced as part of the Thematic Network of PULSE, a European initiative supporting cross-border journalistic collaborations. Contributors: Dina Daskalopoulou (Efysn, Greece), Krassen Nikolov (Mediapool, Bulgaria) and Petra Dvořáková (Deník Referendum, Czech Republic)