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James Siddall | MyBiz Profile | Bizcommunity

James Siddall is a freelance writer and media consultant, contributing to a variety of outlets from The Sunday Independent to The Saturday Star to Car magazine's website. He can be reached at and wants to get his very own website, but is incandescent that someone else was quicker and cleverer than him and has already taken jamessiddall.com.
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James Siddall commented on The perils of freelancing
This is a nice piece, Marion. I remember you well from 1996 when I was deputy editor of Playboy, and you placed two young interns with us.

I have been freelancing since 1997 and it seems to get harder, not easier - largely because many publications are paying the same rate as a decade or two ago.

For instance, one national Sunday newspaper that I regularly write for - and on whose behalf I won a 2011 Vodacom Journo of the Year Award - pays R1-00 per word. The same rate that we were paying our freelancers over 21 years ago, when I was a young writer on Scope magazine.

Another Sunday newspaper that I also regularly write for pays R1-50 per word. The same rate that Business Day's long-defunct AfterHours supplement was paying me 16 years ago. This same Sunday newspaper encourages me to shoot my own pics to go with my stories, thus saving them dispatching a photographer. Per pic they pay R60-00 - or R45-00 after tax. When I first heard the rate, I quite honestly thought a zero had been left off, and even if it had, it'd still be a fairly minimal rate.

If these rates are ever questioned, The Budget is cited, as if it's some inviolate Act of God, But I somehow doubt that these publications' advertising rates, cover prices or indeed staff salaries have stayed frozen for the past decade or two.

I do like writing for these newspapers. But I also enjoy having money for luxuries such as rent - I live in a modest garden cottage - dog food, and 3G data. Food for myself would be nice, too.

Corporate journalism is seeming increasingly attractive.
Posted 1 month ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
Into the darkness

[James Siddall] Counting the hidden cost of power failures - or "load-shedding" as Eskom hilariously terms it...

Posted 5 years ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
To pay or not to pay...

[James Siddall] The electrifying question of whether or not employees must be paid during load-shedding continues to have an insidious effect on the economy.

Posted 5 years ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
Write on! A freelancer's whinge

[James Siddall] Ah, freelancing! Wake up at midday, dash off a bit of rubbish and then freeload the night away. But, idyllic as it might sound, being a freelance writer can mean dealing with organisations and individuals like the ones here...

Posted 2 years ago | Like (1)
SOUTH AFRICA
The dog ate it...

[James Siddall] Are South African employees more creative than most when it comes to being economical with the truth – or lying as it is better known?

Posted 5 years ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
How to avoid 'netiquette' breaches

[James Siddall] Once upon a time corporate correspondence was generally limited to starchy memos generated - at their boss's behest - by steely-haired keepers of the corporate gates. In the past decade or so, that's all changed and with the almost universal advent of email in the workplace, things have become a lot more egalitarian - and, frankly, sloppy.

Posted 6 years ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
Of thieves, liars and serial liquidators...

[James Siddall] One of the first, fundamental lessons of journalism I learnt - or rather, was taught, which is not necessarily the same as absorbed - was this: avoid the use of the word "I". And do not venture or proffer your opinion unless the piece is specifically an editorial or column.

Posted 6 years ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
The power of babble

[James Siddall] The modern corporate world is infatuated with cringe-inducing buzzwords... But what's fascinating - and not necessarily in a good way - is that over the past few years there has been a discernible growth in the use of superfluous and stupid euphemisms, catch-phrases and job titles in the business world.

Posted 6 years ago | Like
SOUTH AFRICA
Porn free - abusing Internet access

[James Siddall] Not even legendary futurist and science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke could and would have predicted that, with all of humanity's accumulated knowledge no more than a few keystrokes away, by far the most frequent Internet searches would revolve around...sex...in all its permutations, imaginable and otherwise.

Posted 6 years ago | Like
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