Hello
Thanks for visiting my website – it’s good to meet you. I’m a freelance journalist who has spent their career working for innovative online publishers. I love finding new ways to tell stories and working with communities of people whose voices often go unheard.
My work has frequently involved finding ways to inform audiences about the biggest stories of the day and answer questions about the news agenda that everyone is talking about.
Having worked in digital newsrooms, I enjoy learning about the impact of digital technology on human behaviour, our culture and the benefits and challenges it can bring to our everyday lives.
Since September 2016, I’ve worked as a freelance journalist. My freelance work combines reporting, writing and editing projects with consulting gigs for newsrooms and publishers. I also regularly develop and deliver training for journalists with a particular focus on digital storytelling and audience growth skills.
In March 2020, I co-founded the Society of Freelance Journalists, a community for freelance journalists around the world to share career advice and peer support.
Get in touch if you’d like to know more about my work or are looking to commission an article, training course or consultancy project.
Before going freelance…
I graduated from City University with a distinction in my Postgraduate Diploma in Newspaper Journalism in 2007. I wanted to work for a news website to apply my training to online audiences and begin learning about the business and tools behind digital publishing.
I spent four years at the media news website and independent business Journalism.co.uk, which offered amazing access to the people shaping the media industry in the UK and beyond. I reported, edited and commissioned for the website as I was promoted through the ranks to editor, and helped launch a series of innovative conferences for journalists, news:rewired.
I began life at the Guardian as part of a new team focused on building social media audiences and communities to enrich the Guardian’s news coverage. As Community Coordinator, News, I worked on a wide variety of projects including sourcing eyewitness accounts from Egypt, Syria and Libya as the ‘Arab Spring’ began and finding new ways to deeply involve experts and readers in our coverage of NHS reforms in a unique live project. My role allowed for a great deal of experimentation with new platforms and cemented my love of exploring new means to tell stories in the best possible way for different audiences.
During five-and-a-half years at the Guardian I was promoted twice and took on leadership of the social and communities team, whose members covered culture, sport, news and our user-generated content platform, GuardianWitness. As Head of Social and Community, I worked on bringing major news stories to an online readership, from elections to natural disasters to exclusive investigations, and defined the strategy and best practice for working with audiences on different platforms, as well as on the Guardian’s site working with our product teams. I also learned how to manage individuals and a growing team within a busy newsroom at an international and legacy news organisation.
Where you might have seen me…
I love to travel and regularly commute to London for work, but, for the past 14 years, have called Brighton, and its beautiful seaside streets, my home.
My freelance work has been covered in the following articles:
12 female freelancers share how to get dream clients – GoBeHere
The rise of the freelance journalist: Tough times and lockdown prompt boom in online networks – Press Gazette
From the Guardian to Vogue via freelancing – Freelance Pod
Solutions Journalism – Freelancing for journalists podcast
Laura Oliver | Freelance journalist 