Dana Kessler
laid off from a newsroom at 49, now I make better money freelance and can show you the spreadsheet
$22/hour , set by Dana Kessler.
Twenty-three years in Connecticut newspapers, ending at a regional chain that shall remain nameless, until March 2023, when they cut the whole features desk on a Tuesday Zoom call. I was 49 with a mortgage and a byline nobody outside Hartford recognized.
The first year was ugly. I pitched sixty-some stories and sold nine. I took a content-mill gig writing about gutter guards for $40 a post and cried in my car about it exactly once.
Year three, I gross more than I did on staff. Not luck. I built a system for pitching, pricing, and chasing invoices, and I track every piece of it.
Sessions with me are working sessions. Bring a pitch, a rate question, or a client who won't pay, and we fix the actual thing while you're on the call.
More background
Cold: pitching editors, pricing freelance work (per word, per project, day rates), kill fees, contracts, following up without groveling, and building an anchor-client base so you're not living pitch to pitch. Also the emotional whiplash of leaving staff journalism. I keep current rate data from about thirty publications and I'll share it.
Good for: journalists and other laid-off writers, editors, and comms people trying to freelance for actual money. Also staffers who see the layoff coming and want a runway plan before it lands.
Not for: aspiring novelists, brands wanting content strategy, or anyone hoping I'll introduce them to my editors. I won't. My contacts took me years; your pitching muscles will take you months, and those are the useful part anyway.
Between sessions I'll read one pitch draft per week by email. I'm sharpest mornings, Eastern time, and I disappear the last week of every month on my own deadlines.