resize text:

Online Journalism News

Freelancer of the fortnight: Andrew Charman, Powys

Posted: 09/04/08 By: Clare Fisher
email this story | post a comment

Click here to look at Andrew Charman's full freelance profile on Journalism.co.uk.

Why did you choose to become a freelancer?
Several reasons - my career had encompassed several magazines and newspapers, not all of them successful, and all in the latter stages involving me editing other people's copy rather than writing. I wanted to get back to writing and I liked the idea of having more control over my day.

If you trained, where? If not, how did you become a freelancer?
Unlike many a motoring journalist I am qualified, my early career having been spent on local newspapers. I actually started as a photographer, going about it totally the wrong way by spending weekends at race circuits while working weekdays in a photographic shop.

I started sending pictures to a new local free newspaper, after a while they sent me on weekend jobs, and eventually employed me as a photo-journalist because they were too small to employ a full-time photographer and knew I could write (at school I was always the one that had to stand up in English class and read out my stories) from the copy I sent in with my pictures.

Eventually the editor decided to send me on the NCTJ course, we then went through six chief reporters and when the sixth left the editor suggested I should apply for her job. The rest, as they say…

Do you specialise in any particular field and what areas do you write about?
Virtually all my work for some years has been in the motoring and motorsport fields, and I've now worked my way up to the point where I am one of the well-known UK freelances among the car manufacturers.

I spend a lot of my working week attending new car launches across the UK, Europe and occasionally beyond.

Initially I would mainly write road tests, but in the last couple of years I've re-invented myself somewhat to produce news stories for generally trade publications (they don't have the glamour of consumer mags but they always pay on time and adequately!).

These days on launches I am as interested in getting something out of the company high-ups as I am in driving the car! I also do the odd travelogue piece for customer magazines - I'd like to do more of these if I could.

The vast majority of my motorsport writing is on the sport of NASCAR (if you've seen Days of Thunder or Cars, that sort of racing). Covering it is slightly difficult as NASCAR is very much a US sport - lots of transatlantic phone calls involved!

I have a real passion and, I'd argue, knowledge of NASCAR and it's an ambition of mine to become the leading UK NASCAR journalist.

While I am a motoring journalist, I would like to write about other subjects if the chance arose - particularly film, I love movies and would go two or three times a week if I could, not easy since I moved to Mid-Wales!

Which publications have you been published in?
Many over the years, and I've edited several magazines, sadly many of which are no longer around (not due to me!).

Today I am a regular correspondent to Motor Trader, I write weekly motoring columns for a group of newspapers in Surrey, Sussex and Greater London, road tests for a lifestyle title called Compass, and motor sport each month in the business title Race Tech. I regularly write one-off features for various motoring magazines from the likes of Auto Express downwards, manufacturer customer mags etc. And like any good freelance I'm always on the lookout for new outlets!

Which articles, in which publication, are you the most proud of?
Actually it is a publication I was most proud of, one I launched and edited in the mid-1990s before I became a freelance. It was called Super Touring Magazine and concentrated on Touring Car racing, which at the time was hugely popular. Sadly the magazine lasted little more than a year, due far more to company politics at board level than its strengths or weaknesses. People still mention it to me more than a decade later.

What are the best and worst aspects of freelancing?
Many say the best is being your own boss, but that's not true because as a freelance you don't have one boss, but many different ones to keep happy. The best bit is definitely the flexibility – to a degree I run my own day, and if I need for example to attend an event at my children's school I can rearrange my day to suit.

The worst is the perennial problem - getting payment on time. The bean counters at publishers still don't understand that a freelance has bills to pay like anyone else, and if the big cheque you expect doesn't turn up until a month after it's due it leaves you in trouble.

I occasionally miss the office banter, though less so since I moved from overcrowded Surrey to the edge of a Welsh village where I can work during the day sitting on my balcony overlooking a valley!

Do you have any interesting anecdotes in relation to your experience as a freelancer?
Well my chosen career has brought me so many experiences, from tobogganing down an Arctic mountainside on what was basically a plastic tea tray to performing aerobatics over a Wiltshire airfield, to driving fast cars at high speed round various race tracks (and that's the bit I really enjoy!). You never do quite know what’s coming next!

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
freelance | sport | freelancer of the fortnight | andrew charman |