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'Freelancing gives freedom to investigate,' says former Telegraph reporter

Ben Bland recently left his job as market reporter for the Daily Telegraph to brave a freelancing career in south east Asia, and so far he has reaped the rewards of organising his own time.

"It was a good time to leave markets behind," he tells Journalism.co.uk.

"I definitely wanted to move away from just writing on the stock market and do more in-depth stuff: more features, more investigation, more big colour pieces.

"That's the great thing about being freelance - you can go out there and get these pieces. When you're working [fulltime] for a newswire, or online, or paper, you don't have the time to do things in-depth."

As recently noted by Roy Greenslade on his Guardian blog, Bland 'scooped' the Australian press with an investigation into CPG, the Singaporean consultancy arm of an Australian engineering firm, Downer EDI. 

CPG had been contracted to work in Burma, on an airport in the new capital, Naypyidaw. CPG would be working with Asia World, a company with links to the ruling junta.

Bland's investigation for the Hong-Kong based Asia Sentinel resulted in the Australian company pulling out of the contract, a story then picked up by the national Australian press even though several titles had initially declined the pitch.

"They claimed they didn't have any freelance budget. I think they'll be kicking themselves now because two of the papers did follow up on it afterwards," Bland tells Journalism.co.uk.

The nugget of the story, Bland tells Journalism.co.uk, 'was pretty easy to uncover'. "I'm suprised no one had written about it before and surprised that the company itself wasn't aware what its subsidaries were doing," he says.

The media scene in south east Asia is limited, creating opportunities for freelancers like him, explains Bland.

"Thankfully there are publications like the Asia Sentinel - which are genuinely focused on Asia and will publish stories domestic newspapers won't publish," he says.

"There are some good bloggers; investigative journalists out there in Singapore, in Malaysia, in Thailand, but there's not much hard-hitting investigative stuff."

Not only is the Asian domestic media often 'tame' in content, but stringers for foreign national newspapers might not have time to pursue leads, Bland claims.

According to Bland, only the Financial Times has someone on the ground in Singapore. British national newspapers have stringers mainly based in Bangkok and the coverage of the entire continent is limited, he adds. There are a few people on retainers who are 'paid a pittance' and often spend their time following up on newswire copy, he says.

"As a freelance you don't have the security of a staff position but you at least have the freedom to go and investigate, rather than churning copy through, which I think is one of the dangers of [being a] retained foreign correspondent," he says.

"You don't have time to go out and report because you're under pressure to cover so many countries and you just cover them from your office."

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freelance | australia | investigative journalism | journalism | singapore | ben bland | press freedom |

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