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Freelance frontline: Updates from Peter Truman, Natasha Courtenay-Smith and 'couch potato' Adam Postans

Posted: 19/11/09 By: Laura Oliver

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Freelance journalists represent an international and diverse community - a quick look at Journalism.co.uk's map of freelancers and freelance photographers will show you that.

Each fortnight we feature individual freelancers from our directory to find out more about their career, but now we're starting a new feature looking at what freelance journalists are working on right now.

Below is the second piece in what we hope will become a regular series - to get in touch email us or send us your news via Twitter to @journalismnews.

Adam Postans and Couch Potato
Regional newspaper columnist for the Western Daily Press and freelance journalist Adam Postans has launched a new website for his Saturday column Couch Potato.

Couch-potato.tv will act as an archive for Postans' column, which takes a light-hearted look at the last week's television.

Postans, who turned freelance in 2006 after three years as deputy news editor of the Western Daily Press, hopes the new site will widen his audience.

"I am extremely grateful to the Western Daily Press' editor Andy Wright who has given me permission to publish the pages as PDFs on my site, which looks very professional yet, surprisingly, doesn't seem to be common practice online," he said.

"In the current climate, the onus on freelancers to find new ways of seeking employment is greater than ever, so my aim with the website is to do precisely that by putting myself in the shop window and gaining a bigger following. This will hopefully secure more work by attracting new employers, in particular regional newspaper editors, to publish my column."

Natasha Courtenay-Smith and Talk to the Press
Freelancer Natasha Courtenay-Smith has won the Women in Business award at this year's StartUps Awards for her press agency, Talk to the Press.

Set up in 2007, the agency aims to help individuals sell their stories to newspapers and magazines.

Peter Truman
Former chief reporter Peter Truman has left south London for a year's travelling while working as a freelance journalist.

"I decided to travel before it was too late in a bid to pick up some experience of journalism overseas before returning to focus on my career. I obtained a working holiday visa for a year in Australia, with the option of extending it for a second year," he told Journalism.co.uk.

"I am looking to expand my portfolio and work in any form of journalism position to boost my experience and try out other disciplines to news. This includes travel features, sports reporting, sub-editing shifts, moderating comments, web management, trade/business-to-business journalism. Although I would be delighted to continue in news at a foreign publication."

Currently based in Sydney, Truman is planning on moving to Melbourne and then to Perth over the next nine months. He hopes to travel to South America for three months and east Asia for three months after leaving Australia.

He can be contacted regarding commissions on peterjtruman [at] gmail.com.

Got a story? Email our news team: Laura Oliver; Judith Townend or telephone +44 (0)1273 384290. You can also follow us on Twitter: @journalismnews / @LauraOliver / @JTownend.