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socialjusticeartshare · 5 years ago

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THE TRUMP CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL

IT’S BEEN TWO years since the peak of public outcry over the Trump administration’s decision to begin separating the children of unauthorized migrant families from their parents at the Mexican border, yet the massive crisis that policy spawned remains arguably the darkest chapter in Donald Trump’s very dark presidency.

MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff has been back and forth from the border and Central America covering the family separation saga since it began, a story he chronicles in his new book “Separated”.

Jacob Soboroff: I think it’s a slow-motion, ongoing, decades-long American tragedy.

[Musical interlude.]

Mehdi Hasan: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Mehdi Hasan.

Whatever happened to all those kids who were stolen from their parents at the border? Why did we just forget about perhaps the biggest scandal, the worst crime, of the Trump presidency?

JS: It was not thought through. There was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

MH: That’s my guest today Jacob Soboroff, NBC News and MSNBC correspondent, and author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.” He’s been covering this crisis, this scandal, at the border from the very beginning.

So, on today’s show, the war on migrants and, especially, the theft of migrant children from their parents: How and why did it happen, and is it even truly over?

Do you remember this?

[Audio clip from ProPublica of children crying at the border.]

MH: That was a recording of 10 Central American children, sobbing desperately after being separated from their parents in June of 2018, here in the United States. That was a recording obtained by ProPublica and which promptly went viral and grabbed newsheadlines — it was even played in the White House briefing room.

That recording helped make ordinary Americans aware of the abuses that were being perpetrated at their southern border, in their name, by the federal government, by the Trump administration — specifically, and shamefully, the deliberate, systematic separation of thousands of brown-skinned migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border on the orders of President Donald J. Trump.

And, for a few months in 2018, what was called “child separation” was the biggest story in America, if not the world:

Newscaster: Families are being torn apart. Thousands of them.

Anderson Cooper: Kids taken hundreds, even thousands, of miles away from their parents. Young children — toddlers, even — housed in so-called “tender-age facilities.”

Jeff Sessions: If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring him across the border illegally.

Prime Minister Theresa May: The pictures of children being held in what appeared to be cages are deeply disturbing.

Newscaster: The Pope labelling it “immoral.”

MH: Two years later, though, we have kinda moved on, as a media industry, and as a nation. To be fair, so many other Trump scandals have sucked up so much oxygen since — whether it was the government shutdown, the Mueller inquiry, Ukraine and the whole impeachment saga, the attacks on protesters in recent weeks, and, of course, the ongoing catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. There’s so much to keep track of — and to keep us outraged.

Still, for me personally, it stands as the biggest, most outrageous, most shocking, most inexcusable scandal of the Trump presidency so far. What’s blandly called “child separation” was, in fact, racism, kidnapping, and child abuse all rolled into one.

In fact, Physicians for Human Rights in a report earlier this year said the Trump family separation policy constituted “torture.” Torture! On American soil. The torture of kids. Kids!

It is difficult to overstate the sheer inhumanity of it all: children were forcibly removed from the arms of their parents; babies were ripped from the breasts of their mothers. And the border agents who did all this somehow went home to their families, to their own kids, and slept fine at night.

Meanwhile, the people in Washington who gave them those orders, who made the cruel and inhumane policies, they’re either still in government, having never faced any real consequences for their part in these crimes; or, in the case of former Trump Chief-of-Staff General John Kelly, or former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, they’re making money in the private sector. In fact, Kelly is on the board of a company called Caliburn International which operates shelters for migrant children! You cannot make this shit up.

These people are vile. They have no shame. Many current and former members of this administration — including the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions — claim to be evangelical Christians. And, yet, they have defended — excused — the torture and abuse of not just refugees but refugee children. They’re not following in the footsteps of Christ; they’re a moral disgrace.

Since the summer of 2017, the Trump administration is believed to have taken at least 5,500 kids from their parents at the border — although the real number could be even higher than that. No one knows for sure. In February of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said, “it is unclear the extent to which Border Patrol has accurate records of separated [families] in its data system.” And as reporter Jacob Soboroff writes in his new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy”: “There are families who were quickly put back together, and children who were, as predicted, permanently orphaned.”

As I pointed out on this show back in 2018, that was not a side effect of having a tough immigration policy; that was their tough immigration policy. That was the goal, the prime objective — of an administration filled with white nationalists and apologists for white nationalists; an administration whose immigration policies are drawn up by a man, Stephen Miller, who late last year was revealed to have sent white nationalist literature and racist stories about immigrants in internal emails. No discussion, in fact, about the immigration policies of this administration can be complete without mentioning the racism, and white nationalism, and just pure cruelty that motivates and drives those policies.

So yes, this administration has used kids, targeted kids, migrant kids, refugee kids, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the most powerless of the powerless, to achieve their policy goals at the border: to crack down on immigration, to placate their far right base, and keep brown people out of the U.S. by any means necessary.

And here’s what’s so important to remember as we sit here, overwhelmed by news and scandal, in the crazy, chaotic summer of 2020 — it never really ended. Hundreds of migrant children continued to be detained in facilities across the country this year, even as the coronavirus spread inside of those facilities, and infected guards and detainees alike.

Last month, a federal judge in LA ordered the release of those kids by the middle of this month. And guess how the Trump administration responded on Tuesday? By telling the court that if they’re forced to release the kids, they won’t release any of the parents who they might be detained with. Got that? Family separation, all over again.

Imagine being the parents of those kids. Keep your kids with you and risk the coronavirus, or have them taken from you and sent out into the world, and who knows if you’ll ever see them again?

What’s called “child separation” is still with us, is still a policy dream of the Trump administration, and yet a total nightmare for the thousands of refugees and asylum seeker families who arrive in this country from Central America every year, seeking protection from war, from violence, from rape.

[Musical interlude.]

MH: My guest today is one of the tenacious, and I should add, deeply compassionate journalists who helped uncover the Trump administration’s vile policy of child torture at the border back in 2018, and who not only contextualized the story for us on our TV screens, but also humanized it.

Jacob Soboroff, of NBC News and MSNBC, was, in fact, one of the first reporters to gain access to the notorious child detention facilities in Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. Here he is, reporting live on MSNBC from outside one of them in the summer of 2018, and not holding back:

JS: There’s a big mess going on right now, and even the Border Patrol inside this building says they’re overstaffed, they don’t have enough resources; the system is just getting stressed out because the Trump administration decided to put this into place, and the consequences really haven’t been worked out, and the biggest consequence of all is thousands of young children, in a way that has never been done before, taken from their parents. And when you hear the Trump administration saying: This has been done before, this is Democrat policy, this is not unusual — that’s B.S., frankly.

MH: Jacob’s reporting earned him the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.

Now he’s written a powerful and, at times, heartbreaking new book about the entire saga, called “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy” — and he joins me now from Yuma, Arizona, just yards from the southern border with Mexico.

Jacob, thanks for joining me on Deconstructed.

JS: Thanks, Mehdi.

MH: You’ve written this new book, “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy,” having covered the 2018 crisis at the border with those kids in cages, with those children taken from their parents, almost exactly two years ago. Is this book, Jacob, about a chapter in recent American history? Or is this a book about what’s still happening right now — ongoing American tragedy?

JS: I think it’s a slow motion ongoing, decades-long American tragedy, Mehdi, and this is the first time I’ve ever done a podcast sitting 20 to 30 yards away from a 30-foot tall border wall installed by President Trump, which is exactly where I’m sitting right now, in Yuma, as I wait for him to arrive here.

You know, the wall, and Donald Trump, have become a symbol of United States immigration policy. This is an immigration policy, however, that has, as I said, spanned decades, and Democratic, and Republican administrations. And since an official Border Patrol doctrine in 1994, called “Prevention Through Deterrence,” the goal of which was to deter migrants from coming to the United States to make them go on a dangerous and deadly journey, where they very well could die trying to get into the United States. Deterrence, pain, and suffering has been a part of U.S. immigration policy and family separations, which I had the misfortune of seeing with my own eyes, was Donald Trump’s extreme extension of that policy.

MH: Yes, the extreme extension, as you say. You’re right to say that this started on previous presidents’ watches — you know, Bill Clinton in the 90s, George Bush, Barack Obama, “the Deporter-in-Chief,” and then you have Trump escalating in this grotesque way. A total of around 4,300 children I believe, “separated from their parents at the border.” This all came to a head in May/June 2018.

So a question that I think a lot of listeners will want to know the answer to — I know I do — do we know for sure, Jacob, if all of those children were eventually reunited with their families?

JS: We don’t. And if it weren’t for the ACLU and a federal judge in San Diego, the vast majority of them may never have been. It was a negligent, dangerous approach at putting this policy into place — sloppy. And the mechanism by which the separations were tracked, I think it actually would be even generous to call it a mechanism: It was not thought through, there was no plan. And today, we’re still picking up the pieces in the aftermath.

And you mentioned a number in the 4,000 range. I think the most recent number according to the ACLU, and this is a constantly evolving number, is over 5,000 children, including children separated after the policy had nominally ended, when Donald Trump signed the executive order on June 20, 2018, ending a policy that days earlier, he said, didn’t even exist.

MH: Yes. First it didn’t exist, and then when they stopped it, it still carried on, as you point out, even after the judicial and executive order fallout.

Um, let me ask you this: One thing that bothers me, and I don’t want to knock the title of your excellent book, because I know how hard it is to come up with a title, and I know that separated is the word that’s been used by everyone — even by me, on occasion, as shorthand — to describe this zero-tolerance policy at the border, and what the Trump administration did to migrant families back in 2018.

But, for me, “separated” always feels like an understatement. It feels too clinical, an empty word. Because what happened was child theft; it was child kidnapping. It was, in many ways, child abuse by the U.S. government. And I worry sometimes that our journalistic shorthand often ends up underplaying how bad things are on the ground; they sanitize things too much. Am I being unfair?

JS: No, I think your point is well taken. And the reason I chose “separated,” as well, is that for me, it doesn’t just describe torture, frankly. And that’s the word that Physicians for Human Rights, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization has used subsequently to describe what these children went through: It meant the clinical definition of torture. But it also described most Americans’ mental separation from how we got to this point; inability to understand and comprehend —

MH: Yeah. Good point.

JS: — how the government did this to children and, in some cases, babies. And that also includes me! I was covering the border even before Donald Trump became president, when Barack Obama was president and was dubbed the “Deporter-in-Chief,” as you mentioned, by immigration activists. I, you know, I was on what I thought was the front lines of immigration reporting, and frankly, I completely missed it myself until it slapped me in the face.

And that’s what I wanted to make clear in the book, is that separated is not just the physical act of what happened to these parents and children, but it really also is a mental state of most Americans about the way that we deal with immigration in this country. So, you know, again, your point is well taken. I think that it’s much more vile what happened to these children than the simple word or simple act of being taken from their parents, but I think that the word also applies to many of us in our everyday lives.

MH: No, that’s a very fair point. And I would urge everyone to read Jacob’s book. It’s an excellent book. You tell the story of José in the book, a young boy from Northern Guatemala, that story is a central thread throughout your book. He fled with his father Juan to the United States in order to escape drug traffickers who were threatening his family. Can you tell us a little bit more about José? Why did you choose his story?

JS: Well, the truth of the matter is, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but I ultimately met his father Juan, and Juan and José are pseudonyms that they picked themselves to protect their own identity and the identity of their family that they left behind in Guatemala. But they come from the northern state of Petén. And Petén, which is actually a place I haven’t been to, and they asked me not to go to — I’ve been to Guatemala on several occasions, but I didn’t go to their home because they were worried about what might happen to their wife they left behind.

They were threatened with violence. Juan was the owner of a small convenience store, and basically got into trouble after a vehicle that he sold was sold to someone else, and fell into the hands of what he tells me, and told the United States government in his asylum application, were narco traffickers, he suspected. And until he would turn over the rights, the documentation, which he no longer had to his car, they were going to put a threat on his life.

And so he decided to pick up and leave with José, come to the United States, go to Arizona, where he had crossed twice successfully before to come and work earlier in his life when his son was was younger, but, for the first time, decided to pick up and leave with his boy to protect him.

MH: Yeah.

JS: And once they got to the United States, to the place where they thought represented safety and security, I’m actually sitting probably 10 miles away from that exact spot right now — and the president will visit almost that exact spot, as I speak to you today, as we record this — they were taken from each other in a way that nobody could have ever anticipated, even though it was going on by the time they left Guatemala and started their journey to the United States in May of 2018.

MH: So, it’s interesting, you mentioned in the context of Juan, that he had crossed twice before, for work, this time he came to protect his child. We have this great debate, of course, as you know better than me, about are these people refugees and asylum seekers or are they all economic migrants coming to work? In your anecdotal experience, having interviewed so many of these people, having covered their stories, what were they? Especially back in 2018, when it kind of hit the headlines in that huge way, when everyone in the country is talking about: Why have they brought children with them, etc, etc?

How many people you were talking to, were, in your, you know, the story you just tell of Juan, that sounds like a genuine asylum application?

JS: And I have no reason to doubt them.

MH: Yeah.

JS: You know, and I think the vast majority of people I came into contact with were coming to the United States from Central America — from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador — in order to seek asylum.

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. And when I was writing the book, I was thinking a lot about this, that nobody’s perfect. And actually, when I heard the Reverend Al Sharpton deliver the eulogy for George Floyd and use the biblical example of a rejected stone becoming the cornerstone, you know, in our conversation about race, and about police brutality, and violence, it made me think of covering immigration at the border.

Nobody is perfect. Nobody comes here with a sparkling clean record or the perfect story that you want to hold up and make an example to change the entire country’s imagination on immigration.

MH: Yes.

JS: He had come here before, twice, illegally. He freely admitted it to me. And he laughed and smiled when he said: They didn’t catch me previously. And I think it’s not mutually exclusive; you can be an economic migrant and also, later in your life, become a refugee from violence. And I think, too often, we boil it down to: it’s one or the other.

MH: Yes.

JS: But these stories often intersect. And I think we do a disservice, or the general public does a disservice, when we try to distill it to one or another because, oftentimes, that really isn’t the case.

MH: And it’s not just Latin American families that we’re talking about, of course. You describe a Congolese mother and her daughter who was separated trying to enter the U.S.; you say “the mother was taken to an adult immigration jail in San Diego, and her daughter was sent to a shelter in Chicago.” You also say that when she was told her daughter was in Chicago, she did not know what the word meant.

How do people like that woman and her daughter a) end up at the southern border? And how is their story different to some of the more familiar Latin American stories that you tell in your reporting?

JS: Well, I think that the southern border has become an entry point for people from around the world looking to seek refuge in the United States and seek asylum. And if it wasn’t for that Congolese woman and her daughter, who later became known as Ms. L., none of these 5,000-plus families would have been reunited, because she became the plaintiff, the original plaintiff, in the ACLU case —

MH: Yes.

JS: — against the government. And so what happened to her, and her story, was slightly different. She presented legally at the San Ysidro port of entry in between San Diego and Tijuana, where you can legally walk up and declare asylum as part of an internationally recognized legal process. And the United States government told her they didn’t believe her, took her away from her daughter, and not until a DNA test confirmed it, were they placed back together. But that wasn’t soon enough to stop the thousands of separations, you know, from happening.

And that’s another example, Mehdi, of it’s never a perfect story. You know, she thought she was doing it the right way, but the United States government challenged her on that, and it set off, you know, this whole chain of events.

MH: I think we’ve learned over the last four years that, for this administration, there is no right way of claiming asylum or coming into the country.

JS: Sure. That’s right. That’s right.

MH: They just don’t want people coming into the country.

You describe in the book the moment in June 2018, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen infamously tweeted, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”

You say, in the book: “My eyes widened when I saw it. You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. Come on.”

Where were you at that moment? And why did that tweet from her so stun you?

JS: Because earlier that week, I was inside the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center — they call it Ursula in the Border Patrol, and that’s in McAllen, South Texas, where they let us in.

Katie Waldman, who later became Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, and now the Vice President’s communications director, was, at the time, a spokesperson for Kirstjen Nielsen. She invited me and another group of journalists into that center to see with our own eyes what family separations look like, because I think they believed that with outrage from the general public based on media attention, Congress would do what the Trump administration wanted, which was pass more restrictive order regulations. Of course, that backfired.

And the reason that I was was so flabbergasted by what Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted is that days earlier, if not hours earlier, I had been inside the center where I saw, with my own eyes, separated children sitting on concrete floors, covered by those silver blankets, under a security contractor in a watchtower. It makes me sick every time I talk about it. It gives me the chills every time I talk about it, as — then — the father of a two-year-old boy.

It was — and I don’t know —I really don’t know another way to describe it other than disgusting, to see social workers standing around Border Patrol agents, not allowed to touch the children, all because of official government policy when many of the families in there didn’t know what they were about to experience themselves, you know, to this day leaves me speechless. And to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security, who I didn’t know at the time, but I now know in writing the book, had signed the policy into place — it is just wrong. There’s no other way to say it.

MH: I mean, this is an administration that says openly: Don’t believe the evidence in front of your eyes, don’t believe what you see with your own eyes, and don’t believe what you hear with your own ears. It’s the gaslighters-in-chief.

You say, early in the book, you sum things up this way, you say: “What I have now unequivocally learned is that the Trump administration’s family separation policy was an avoidable catastrophe, made worse by people who could have made it better at multiple inflection points.”

In what sense, Jacob, was it avoidable, given that we already had a president clearly bent on implementing harsh border policies? Who or what around him could have stopped it?

JS: Well, in particular, you know, Scott Lloyd, who was the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was warned on multiple occasions about the damage — the long-lasting trauma — that family separations would do to children. And, ostensibly, this was the man who was the custodian of the thousands of migrant children in the custody of the United States government. And, in particular, Jonathan White, commander in the U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps, under Health and Human Services, has testified publicly to this — that he warned Scott Lloyd about the long-lasting damage that separations would do to these children. (Scott Lloyd, of course, is the same official who tried to ban abortions in HHS custody for young migrant girls.)

And the bottom line is when you look at the actions of Scott Lloyd, he did anything but stop family separations from happening. One official later told me that he believed that this was the greatest human rights catastrophe of his lifetime, in seeing this take place under the leadership of Scott Lloyd. And had the career officials in HHS, child welfare professionals, whose motto is not only to do no harm, like in the medical profession, but to put the best interest of the clients first — and that’s the children — this never would have happened. The best interests of the children were very obviously not put first here.

MH: Yeah.

JS: The officials of HHS and the professionals were certainly pushing for that all along.

MH: And there were a lot of people involved in this process, none of whom resigned on principle, none of whom came out and became a whistleblower at that time, which says a lot about how certain people’s morals are corrupted working in this administration.

Just to go back to an earlier point you made about this being a decades-long tragedy, a lot of Trump officials and Trump supporters — and some on the left — say it’s unfair to pin what you call “an American tragedy” wholly on Trump, because it was the Obama administration that built many of the cages that were used in 2018; it was the Obama administration that put unaccompanied minors from Central America in detention. There was a big overlap between a lot of their policies and practices at the southern border, between those two administrations. What do you say to them?

JS: Well, in some measure, they’re right. I mean, the Obama administration did build the McAllen Border Patrol Processing Center where I saw the children in cages. Those cages were built by the Obama administration. And they believe that that was the best option at the time. Certainly activists and immigration rights lawyers and such didn’t believe that, and were extremely vocal in voicing their opposition at the time.

The Trump administration had the opportunity to go in a different direction. They never signaled that that was their intention. In fact, they always signaled a harsher immigration policy than the Obama administration. But they didn’t have to institute the family separation policy; the Obama administration considered implementing the family separation policy. Some of the same officials within the Department of Homeland Security brought it up. And in the book I talk about how on Valentine’s Day, 2017, less than a month into the Trump administration, some of the officials that overlapped from the Obama administration into the Trump administration, basically revived — resuscitated — a policy, a rejected, discarded policy, that even the Obama administration, which was was not beloved by immigration activists, put the side.

MH: Yes.

JS: And this was a conscious, deliberate decision by the Trump administration to move forward with something that they knew all along was a deterrence policy, that was so bad, it would try to scare people away from coming to the United States. And John Kelly, when he was the secretary of homeland security in March of 2017, admitted freely on CNN.

MH: So, just to be clear, what Trump did in 2018 at the border with these “separations” is much worse than anything Obama, or, for that matter, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton did at the border; that is fair to say based on your own reporting and research in this book?

JS: Well, the reason I say that this was unprecedented was that it was “systematic child abuse,” in the words of Physicians for Human Rights or American Academy [of] Pediatrics, at the hands of the Trump administration — deliberate, systematic child abuse or torture.

The Obama administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration all had their own very harsh deterrence policies; I’m sitting in Arizona now where hundreds of people have died trying to cross in the desert because of border infrastructure walls, like the ones I’m looking at in front of my face as I talk to you. But never was the policy directed specifically at children for the purpose of hurting parents and children. And therein is the difference.

MH: Good point.

JS: I mean, that’s where the Trump administration took it to a level that had never been seen before. It doesn’t mean that, for a long time, there haven’t been cruel, harsh, and deadly immigration policies.

MH: But, in this case, it was a stated policy to cause harm in order to stop people from coming.

JS: That’s for sure. And they would never admit that, that the purpose was to hurt children. But when you say deterrence, you have to be deterred by something — and the something, here, was trauma.

MH: So, you paint a picture in the book of a president who — shock! horror! — is, you know, over his head. You know, he’s out of control, but he also doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s a huge culture of fear around him, you say, in the White House. You talk about the chaos surrounding this policy; obviously, we know very much about the Trump administration’s incompetence when it comes to any area of public policy.

But in my view, there’s also not enough discussion in our industry, Jacob, in the ‘liberal media,’ about the ideology that drives a lot of Trump’s immigration policy. This is not just them trying to look tough or messing up. You have a White House that openly plays footsie with white nationalists.

JS: Mhmm.

MH: And a top Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, who leads on this issue, and who is at best, an apologist for white nationalism, at worst, a card carrying white nationalist himself; this is a guy who the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC, has thoroughly documented by his own leaked emails, has promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories, obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols. And yet, we just don’t talk about it as much as we should. It’s like we’re too polite to mention the open white nationalism from this White House when we talk about immigration and border controls.

JS: Another way to put it is that the target of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies are more often than not brown people —

MH: Yes.

JS: — who come to the southern border where the majority of people who enter this country illegally, or ultimately stay in this country illegally, come via airplane from countries other than Central America or Latin America by overstaying visas.

And the Trump administration has not — or did not, at that time — target visa overstays as their primary concern, when that was, by definition, by numbers, where most people who were in the United States ‘illegally’ were coming from. The policy has always been, the ire has always been targeting people with a different skin color coming from the southern border, and not at the majority of people who are entering the country and staying in the country illegally.

And, you said it. I mean, that’s why this policy is, or was — I guess you could still say is, family separations are still happening — racist. I mean, this is not a policy that is being targeted at people who are flying here and staying here after going to school or getting a job or some other form of immigration to the United States. He’s targeting people who come through the southern border, period.

MH: Just to clarify for our listeners, you say family separation is still happening. Just briefly, how is it still happening?

JS: Well, the Trump administration is giving families an option: either separate, or be deported, or held indefinitely in family detention. That’s called binary choice. It’s the type of policy that’s being put forward.

You won’t be surprised to learn, Mehdi, that nobody is selecting family separation as an option when they’re presented with it.

MH: Yeah.

JS: But it is still an option that the Trump administration is giving migrants in custody. It’s a catch-22 situation, you know? Either get kicked out of the country and your child stays here, and be in indefinite family detention with your child, or separate from your child, let your child go free, but you won’t see your child, because you’ll, you know, you’ll continue to be detained. It’s just family separation with a different mechanism.

MH: The ‘family separation crisis of 2018,’ I think we would agree, Jacob, was one of the biggest crises, one of the most horrifying episodes of the Trump presidency. And given how many big crises and horrific episodes there have been over the past four years, that’s a pretty high bar that it met. And even by the standard of awful Trump scandals, this one stood out.

And yet he survived. The people around him survived. A lot of people just forgot about it. Washington, the media, largely moved on. If we hadn’t moved on, if there had been consequences — for the lies, the law-breaking, the racism, the child abuse — do you think we might have avoided or even been better prepared for many of the other Trump crises that have since followed it?

JS: It’s such a good question. I would like to think so, but that goes back to the separation from the American public about what’s happening and why.

And so often, I find, that too many of us are disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in our country. It’s too easy to look around in our own neighborhood —

MH: Yep.

JS: — to talk about our own concerns versus what’s happening at the border.

I’ll give you one example. I went to Tornillo, where they had that tent city in the wake of the separation crisis and all the migrant boys housed there. And I write about this in the book, I asked a local farmer growing pomegranates what his main concern was, and he said the production of food. And this was a man that was a stone’s throw away from thousands of kids being locked up in a tent in 100-degree heat in the middle of the South Texas desert.

And, you know —

MH: Wow.

JS: — I’ll never forget that. Because, you know, if, if he’s gonna forget about it, or if it’s not going to be top of mind for him, it isn’t going to be for people in suburban America either. And which is why, I think, you know, just it was so important to me to write this book, not just to remind people of this, but to answer those questions for myself: How could this possibly have happened? How could we possibly have moved on? You know, and what is it gonna take for this to not happen again?

MH: Well, I’m so glad you wrote the book and one of the issues that really bothers me is that there’s been very little accountability for the main players in this saga.

Former Trump Chief-of-Staff, former DHS Secretary General John Kelly went off to work in the private sector. He even joined the board of Caliburn International, a company that operates the largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children —oh, the irony. His successor as DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was invited as recently as October last year to speak at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women’s Summit in Washington, D.C.. There doesn’t seem to have been much accountability.

JS: Not just no accountability, many but some of these people have been put in charge of the response or at least on the team to the coronavirus outbreak that’s killed over 100,000 people in this country. In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, I remember sitting at home on lockdown like everybody else, watching, up on the podium, Chad Wolf, now the acting secretary of homeland security — then, a top deputy to Kirstjen Nielsen — who, as my colleague Julia Ainsley first reported, was involved in the drafting of the initial family separation policy to be presented to her.

Katie Waldman, as I mentioned, was the spokeswoman for Kirstjen Nielsen and is now the spokeswoman for the Vice President of the United States. It seems as though the people that were involved in the family separation policy have not been disciplined, or reprimanded, or faced accountability; on the contrary, they’ve been elevated to new positions. And you mentioned John Kelly, who’s started working with Caliburn, this company that is profiting off of the detention of child migrants in multiple facilities now, along the southwest border.

I would say that it’s baffling and stupefying, but, again, it’s just like you said — it’s another one of these consequence-less actions of the Trump administration that, you know, they seem to benefit from when, you know, common sense would say they should be punished.

MH: By the way, at that Fortune summit, my good friend Amna Nawaz of PBS News asked Kirstjen Nielsen if he regretted the so-called family separation policy.

Amna Nawaz: I’m asking you if you regret making that decision.

Kirstjen Nielsen: I don’t regret enforcing the law, because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security. We don’t make the laws; we asked Congress to change the law, Congress reviewed the law in 2006 and decided to continue to make it illegal to cross in that manner.

MH: When you hear Nielsen saying that, Jacob, what’s your reaction?

JS: The same bewilderment that I felt when I saw her tweet that: “There is no family separation policy. Period.” I thought that that interview, by the way, was spectacular.

MH: Yeah.

JS: And the line of questioning was perfect, because Kirstjen Nielsen is an expert in slipping away from questions about the family separation policy. If anyone should face accountability for the policy, it is her.

She had to sign, and I outline it in the book, a decision memo that sat on her desk with three options to implement the end of what was known as catch-and-release: the idea that migrants who come to the southern border would be released to the interior, with their families, until their immigration case would be adjudicated in the courts, until they had to show up for court. And by the way, many migrants — most migrants — do show up for that process, because they want to attain asylum in this country.

She chose of the three options, the most severe, the most punitive of family separations. It was a deliberate and clear decision by her; she had to sign her name — literally on the dotted line — for the policy. And the idea that she doesn’t face any responsibility for this, that it wasn’t something that she ultimately would come to regret, I just don’t believe it. I don’t — knowing what I know about her, having sat face-to-face with her at the start of this policy — I do not believe that that is truly the way that she feels. And I know, certainly, that she knows the responsibility that she bears for it.

JS: And like every ex-Trump official, especially once he leaves office, everyone’s going to be spinning how they were actually resisting inside the administration — they were the good guys pushing back against awful policies from the top.

And we focus a lot on Trump, and we should focus also on these ex-Trump officials who are trying to rehabilitate themselves; they should really be shunned by polite society. But sadly, we know Washington, D.C.: they won’t be, they aren’t being shunned. And that’s depressing.

One last question for you, Jacob. Given what you saw with your own eyes, what you heard in terms of testimony from some of these parents and children — the trauma of it, as you put it — how hard a book was this for you to write.

JS: Well, certainly not as hard as being separated from your child, indefinitely, in the minds of a lot of these parents. It was — it was difficult to revisit. But covering family separations is something that will have changed me, forever, for my entire life. I think there’s a lot of people out there who, having watched the story — not just from my coverage, but from the wonderful journalism that was done, you know, during and after this policy — you know, it’s changed a lot of people.

And, for me, this was something that I wanted to do to answer questions that I didn’t know the answer to in real time. And it’s also something that I wanted to do for Juan and José, because the reason that they decided to participate in this story with me was so that it never happens again. And I really mean that. You know, I don’t know if it’s kosher to say that as a journalist, that covering this, and writing this book, you know, for me has a specific and — what I hope — is a positive outcome. But that’s really what this was about for me.

And to revisit it was, was difficult. But it’s nothing compared to what Juan and José and 5,000 other children went through.

MH: Jacob, congratulations on an important book. Thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed.

JS: Thank you, Mehdi. Appreciate it.

[Musical interlude.]

MH: That was Jacob Soboroff, author of the new book “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.”

And that’s our show! And we’re going to be on a little bit of a summer break, here on Deconstructed. The show will be back in August. Hope you’re all able to have a break too. Stay safe while we’re gone!

Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.

And I’m Mehdi Hasan. You can follow me on Twitter @mehdirhasan. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice: iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at [email protected]. Thanks so much!

See you next month.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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Trump Focuses on Economy at Davos, Seeking a Counter to Impeachment https://nyti.ms/36cm7JC

Trump is with his “people” at Davos-the wealthy one per cent who are responsible for crippling recessions and the group who will not put their ample resources to work to make a difference in the huge challenge of climate change. They represent money but not wisdom and responsibility. Davos is a “ see and be seen “ opportunity not a forum for serious solutions to the world’s problems.

Also, what's not to love about Trumpnomics? More subsidies to big industries, less taxes for the rest of us and to social welfare programsw; shifts the federal tax burden from business to their employees and customers; rebalances regulations to favor business over employees, customers and the environment. Never mind that the National Debt grows more than the economy (GDP), even as infrastructure decays and more people are disconnected from the benefits of economic growth. Never mind the cost to society and the planet...

TRUMP TAKES A VICTORY LAP AT DAVOS, CROWING ABOUT THE U.S. ECONOMY AND IGNORING IMPEACHMENT

By Anne Gearan and Toluse Olorunnipa | Published Jan 21 at 7:46 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted Jan 21, 2020 |

DAVOS, Switzerland — President Trump trumpeted what he called "America's extraordinary prosperity" on his watch, taking credit for a soaring stock market, a low unemployment rate, and a "blue-collar boom" in jobs and income, in a presidential turn on the world stage also meant to make impeachment proceedings against him in Washington look small.

Trump ran through economic statistics with a salesman's delivery, crowing about growth during his three years in office that he said bested his predecessors and defied his skeptics.

“America is thriving; America is flourishing, and, yes, America is winning again like never before,” he told an audience of billionaires, world leaders and figures from academia, media, and the kind of international organizations and think tanks for whom his “America First” nationalism is anathema.

Trump is making his second visit to the World Economic Forum, which for its 50th anniversary this year is focusing on climate change and sustainability. A sign at the entrance to the press center notes that paint for this year’s installation was made from seaweed, and carpets from recycled fishing nets.

Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, did not directly address the theme during his 30-minute address here, although he did call for rejecting “the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse” and later said he is a big believer in the environment.

He also made no mention of impeachment or U.S. politics, although he took a swipe at “radical socialism,” his term for Democratic ideas about health care, education and other issues. The Senate impeachment trial was set to open hours after he spoke.

In response to questions from reporters after his speech, Trump called the impeachment trial a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” that has been “going on for years.”

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the forum, thanked Trump “for injecting optimism” into the discussion.

“We have many problems in the world, but we need dreams,” he said.

Trump received a polite but not enthusiastic reception in the hall. A few in the audience slipped out well before he wrapped up.

Even as Trump faces impeachment, his trip to Davos offers him an opportunity focus on his economic message. The U.S. economy has continued to notch solid growth and maintain a low unemployment rate, and the stock market has reached record highs in recent days. Trump signed a partial trade deal with China last week, easing global tensions over his use of tariffs.

But the president faces continued questions about his approach to foreign affairs. His decision to order a strike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani earlier this month — and his threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on European cars over a foreign policy dispute — have created more tumult in the Middle East and in the transatlantic relationship between the United States and its closest allies.

Trump was billed as the keynote speaker for the annual business-themed confab in this Alpine ski town, but the main attraction was Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, 17, who has sparred with Trump on Twitter.

Last year, Thunberg blamed world leaders at the forum for not doing more to combat climate change. She has since echoed that message while rallying teenagers worldwide to skip school and pressure global leaders to take stronger action to address the existential threat.

In December, Trump insulted the teenager and Time magazine “Person of the Year” as “so ridiculous” and suggested that she “work on her anger management problem.”

Thunberg was quick to respond, updating her Twitter biography to describe herself as “A teenager working on her anger management problem.”

Trump had not yet arrived in Davos when Thunberg gave her first address Tuesday morning, saying that “without treating this as a real crisis, then we cannot solve it.” He was expected to skip her main speech later in the day.

Trump is an outlier at the forum for his views on climate change. The president has publicly criticized global efforts to combat warming temperatures and has made ridiculing energy-efficient products a key part of his reelection stump speech.

Ahead of Trump’s address, Schwab told the gathering that “the world is in a state of emergency” and that the window to address climate change is closing. Speaking ahead of Trump, he also reminded the audience that “every voice” heard at the forum deserved respect.

Trump was accompanied here by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, and a delegation including his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Also present is adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller, whose hard-line stance on limiting immigration and denunciations of “globalism” infused Trump’s address to the United Nations in September.

“This is the wreckage I was elected to clean up,” Trump said of the “bleak” economic landscape he inherited.

He praised himself repeatedly, saying that his actions saved the global economy from the brink of recession, rescued the American manufacturing industry and reshaped the rules of international trade to reflect a fairer system.

He occasionally strayed from the facts as he tried to paint a picture of an economy in a shambles before he took office.

He described the 4.7 percent unemployment rate before he took office as “reasonably high,” even though it was well below the average unemployment rate in the United States over the past 70 years. He also took credit for additional funding that has been approved for historically black colleges and universities, saying inaccurately that the funding “saved” the schools from ruin.

He took a swipe at the Federal Reserve for its interest rate policies, saying his economic achievements came despite the rate-setting body. Although his attacks on the Fed have become common, the once-taboo practice seemed to startle some in the audience here.

Trump is using his day-and-a-half visit to lobby corporate chieftains for greater U.S. investment and to meet with leaders including Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Iraqi President Barham Salih and Kurdish leader Nechirvan Barzani.

Although climate change and environmental stewardship lead the agenda here, a survey of chief executives released Monday shows that they do not count climate change as among the top 10 threats to business growth.

The financial services group PwC said climate change and environmental issues are ranked as the 11th-biggest threat to their companies’ growth prospects, the Associated Press reported. Trade conflicts and lack of skilled workers ranked higher.

The survey also found that 53 percent of CEOs predict a decline in the rate of growth this year, nearly double the percentage who said the same last year and a mark of how the trade conflict between the United States and China has soured business confidence.

Trump, however, painted a sunny picture Tuesday and invited global investment in the United States. He suggested that other nations would benefit from his approach to deregulation, but said, “You have to run your countries the way you want.”

He said he had confronted “predatory” Chinese trade practices and asserted that his tariffs, denounced by many of the CEOs and economists in the audience, have worked exactly as intended.

“No one did anything about it except allowing it to keep getting worse and worse and worse” before he took office, Trump said.

He said that the U.S. relationship with China has never been better, and that his personal bond with Chinese President Xi Jinping is a big reason.

“He’s for China, I’m for the U.S., but other than that we love each other,” Trump said to chuckles.

He received louder applause when he announced that the United States will join an initiative begun here to add 1 trillion trees worldwide.

Trump’s 2018 visit to the World Economic Forum came just days after he signed a bill lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent — a move that will save businesses billions of dollars.

He largely steered clear of discussing domestic political issues during his speech to the forum in 2018, instead using his remarks to tout his accomplishments and encourage business leaders to invest in the United States. He did take a brief swipe at “the opposing party,” pointing out that “some of the people in the room” supported Democrats over him in 2016. He also drew a smattering of boos when he attacked the news media as “fake.”

This year, two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), have sparked growing alarm among the global elite with calls for a major restructuring of the economic system that they say has been skewed to benefit the wealthy.

Trump, who has made attacking “socialism” part of his reelection message, could find a receptive audience as he seeks to defend capitalism and tout his economic record to a group of business leaders. The president has regularly credited his administration with boosting the bottom lines of the country’s largest companies, occasionally bragging to top executives that he had made them very rich. More than 100 billionaires are on the official attendee list for the World Economic Forum, and Trump plans to meet with the heads of several multinational companies during his brief stay in Davos.

______

Heather Long contributed to this report.

*********

Climate Change Takes Center Stage in Davos

With businesses under pressure to act, solutions are emerging, but not fast enough, some participants fear.

By Stanley Reed | Published Jan. 20, 2020 | New York Times | Posted January 21, 2020 |

Even before catastrophic fires broke out in Australia in late fall, climate change was at the top of the list of priorities at the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

But those fires — preceded by others in California — along with rising sea levels, flooding and supercharged storms, are putting more pressure on the politicians, business executives, financiers, thought leaders and others who attend to show they are part of the solution to one of the world’s most pressing challenges.

In a nod to a younger generation most at risk and demanding action on climate change, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who has become a prominent environmental activist, is scheduled to appear. In a column this month in The Guardian that she wrote with other environmental activists, they demanded an end to investments in fossil fuels.

“Anything less than immediately ceasing these investments in the fossil fuel industry would be a betrayal of life itself,” they said. “Today’s business as usual is turning into a crime against humanity. We demand that leaders play their part in putting an end to this madness.”

Daniel Yergin, the oil historian and a regular attendee at the Davos forum, agreed that “climate is going to loom larger than ever before.” And Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the political risk firm Eurasia Group, said: “These issues are becoming more real, more salient every day, whether you are talking about Venice or California or Australia or Jakarta. These are real events with enormous direct human and economic costs.”

But an overriding question as the Davos gathering gets underway is: Will all the talk matter?

Mr. Bremmer, who plans to attend, said the forum could help force change because it brings together big players, like chief executives of banks, money management firms and hedge funds, who are rethinking their investments. Gradually — some say too gradually — financial firms are directing money away from oil companies and others associated with carbon-dioxide emissions blamed for environmental damage.

Financial institutions “see the future coming, and they are changing the way they invest,” Mr. Bremmer said. “That is going to require multinational corporations to act differently; it will lead to new corporations that will do better.”

While thinking on climate change may be shifting, by some metrics the corporate elite that always makes up a large contingent at Davos still has a lot of work to do. According to a study published in December by the Davos organizers, only a quarter of a group of 7,000 businesses are setting a specific emissions reduction target and only an eighth are actually reducing their emissions each year.

If so, they are making a major strategic error, according to Mark Carney, the departing governor of the Bank of England who planned to be in Davos. Companies that work to bring their emissions to zero “will be rewarded handsomely,” Mr. Carney said in a recent speech. “Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist.”

Some people in the financial industry said that environmental issues were being given greater weight in investment decisions despite setbacks like President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement on climate change. The president, who shunned the gathering in Davos last year, said he would go this time.

The number of people who are talking about fossil fuels as a real concern “has increased dramatically over the last 12 to 24 months,” said Jeff McDermott, chief executive of Greentech Capital, an investment bank focused on low-carbon technologies. “They are both looking at the risks of high-carbon companies and industries as well as the returns available from low-carbon alternatives.”

Mr. McDermott said that Davos was a good venue for sifting through such ideas. The conference organizers are also pushing an environmental agenda that supports an ecologist’s notion of persuading the world to plant a trillion trees to soak up carbon dioxide and prodding companies to announce ambitious targets for lowering their emissions.

Potentially, enormous sums could be used to influence corporate behavior. For instance, Climate Action 100+ said investors with around $35 trillion in assets had signed on to its program for pushing companies toward greater disclosure and action on emissions.

“I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance,” wrote Laurence D. Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, which has nearly $7 trillion under management, in a letter vowing to put sustainability at the core of the firm’s investment approach.

Many likely targets of investor and environmental initiatives may be available at the gathering at the Swiss resort. Among them are the chiefs of the world’s major oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron and Saudi Aramco, who are expected to attend.

In recent months, some of these companies, especially those based in Europe, have been responding to the concerns of investors and other constituents with commitments to reduce their emissions or make investments in other environmentally friendly technology.

Repsol, the Spanish oil company, pledged last month to cut its emissions to zero by 2050 through a combination of actions, including more investments in renewable electricity like wind and solar and, possibly, reforestation. And BP, the London-based oil company, said it was forming a business with other companies for recycling a type of plastic known as PET that is used in soft drink bottles and packaging. In the latest of these pledges, Equinor, the Norwegian company, said it would reduce emissions from its oil and gas fields and plants in its home country to near zero by 2050 by using electricity in its operations and other measures.

Mr. Yergin, who is also vice chairman of IHS Markit, a research firm, said that “energy transition” would be the “two most spoken words at Davos” about the sector.

Marco Alverà, chief executive of Snam, an Italian natural gas company, plans to talk about recent experiments in mixing hydrogen, a fuel that does not produce carbon emissions, with the natural gas that the company delivers to users, potentially lowering their climate impact. Mr. Alverà said he was going to Davos because he thought it would be a “powerful forum” to make his points.

“I don’t think we will solve the climate challenge with taxes or a radical change in consumer behavior,” he said. “I think we can only solve it with business ideas that make business sense.”

The chemical industry, another sector that is integral to modern economies and a target for environmentalists, also plans to make its case at Davos.

A group of about 20 large chemical companies is working on low-carbon technologies, like making chemicals from carbon dioxide and biomass, said Martin Brudermuller, chief executive of the German chemical company BASF.

Mr. Brudermuller also said another large coalition in the sector was working on the plastic waste problem, with BASF turning discarded plastic into raw materials for its plants. Mr. Brudermuller cautioned that such problems, which involve not only new technologies but also organizing the collection and sorting of waste, are so complex and globe-spanning that only an effort of similar scope will succeed in solving them.

“A collaborative effort of companies, governmental and nongovernmental organizations as well as civil society is necessary to address the global challenge of mismanaged waste,” Mr. Brudermuller wrote in an email.

Awareness of these issue may be growing, but with global emissions continuing to rise governments are falling short on tackling them, according to a pre-conference report issued by the World Economic Forum. Many businesses, too, are failing to set effective targets, the report said. In 2006, Nicholas Stern was the chief author of a seminal study for the British government that set out the case for acting on climate change. More than a decade later, as he prepared to attend the 50th gathering in Davos, Lord Stern, chairman of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, said there were reasons to be encouraged and to worry.

He said that the costs of wind and solar technology had fallen much more rapidly than anticipated. Electric vehicles, he said, were also making more rapid progress than expected, with most automakers talking about the end of the era of the internal combustion engine.

Such advances, he said, are opening attractive opportunities for investors and creating jobs.

He also said the growing activism of young people was crucial in pushing their elders to enact change. “Business people really feel that,” including those who attend Davos, he said, adding that he hoped such pressures would push companies into making commitments on emissions reduction at the meeting.

On the other hand, he said that the world had been slow to act and each report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations agency that tracks emissions, was more worrying than the last.

“I am really optimistic about what it is possible to do,” he said. “But I worry deeply about whether we will.”

*********

IN DAVOS, A SEARCH FOR MEANING WITH CAPITALISM IN CRISIS

By Ishaan Tharoor | Published January 20 at 9:35 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 21, 2020 |

DAVOS, Switzerland — The World Economic Forum, the most concentrated gathering of wealth and power on the planet, will begin once again amid a natural fortress of snow and ice in the Swiss Alps. President Trump is jetting in for a scheduled address Tuesday. Dozens of other world leaders are in attendance; a who’s who list of CEOs, fund managers, oligarchs and a smattering of celebrities will join the throngs cramming the pop-up pavilions and swanky hotel parties of the otherwise sleepy mountain town.

This year’s conclave will be the 50th since it began in 1971, marking a fitful half century of political turmoil and economic boom and bust. For years, Davos — that is, the conference of global leaders for which it has become synonymous — has represented the apotheosis of a particular world view: an almost Promethean belief in the virtues of liberalism and globalization, anchored in a conviction that heads of companies can become capable and even moral custodians of the common good.

The disruptions and traumas of the past decade have sorely tested Davos’s faith in itself. The archetypal Davos Man — the well-heeled, jet-setting “globalist” — has become an object of derision and distrust for both the political left and right. Financial crises, surging nationalist populism in the West, China’s intensifying authoritarianism and the steady toll of climate change have convinced many that there’s nothing inexorable about liberal progress. A new global opinion poll of tens of thousands of people found that more than 50 percent of those surveyed now think capitalism does "more harm than good."

Each year, the forum is accompanied by an unsurprising airing of cynicism in the media. “It is [a] family reunion for the people who, in my view, broke the modern world,” Anand Giradharadas, an author and outspoken critic of billionaire philanthropy, said in a TV interview last year. Can Davos “keep its mojo?” the Economist asked over the weekend. “Once a beacon of international cooperation, Davos has become a punchline,” the New York Times noted.

Klaus Schwab, the forum’s octogenarian founder and executive chairman, is convinced that the current moment needs more Davos, not less. In the run-up to this week’s meetings, he announced a new “Davos manifesto,” calling on companies to “pay their fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance for corruption, uphold human rights throughout their global supply chains, and advocate for a competitive level playing field.” Such an ethos, Schwab contends, will go a long way to redressing the world’s inequities and may help governments meet the climate targets set by the 2015 Paris agreement.

“Business leaders now have an incredible opportunity,” Schwab wrote in a column published last month. “By giving stakeholder capitalism concrete meaning, they can move beyond their legal obligations and uphold their duty to society.”

Schwab’s extolling of “stakeholder” capitalism — a riposte to the profit-maximizing Western orthodoxy of “shareholder” capitalism — is supposed to be a call to action. Activists, though, may argue that it’s not enough.

In a study timed in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, Oxfam found the world’s billionaires control more wealth than 4.6 billion people, or 60 percent of humanity. “Another year, another indication that the inequality crisis is spiraling out of control. And despite repeated warnings about inequality, governments have not reversed its course,” said Paul O’Brien of Oxfam America in an emailed statement. “Some governments, especially the U.S., are actually exacerbating inequality by cutting taxes for the richest and for corporations while slashing public services and safety nets — such as health care and education — that actually fight inequality.”

And some Davos attendees concur. “The economic pie is bigger than it’s ever been before in history, which means we could make everyone better off, but we’ve chosen as a society to leave a lot of people behind,” Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, told my colleague Heather Long. “That’s not just inexcusable morally but is also really bad tactically.”

Reading from a totally different script, President Trump is expected to wax lyrical about the success of his economic and trade policies. In the past, his bullying measures and fondness for tariffs have ruffled the Davos set.

“Although the president has been inconsistent in how he has carried out his worldview, he has made clear that he has no plans to back away from his strong-arm tactics even as they have increasingly antagonized American friends and foes alike, leaving the United States potentially more isolated on the world stage,” wrote my colleagues Anne Gearan and John Hudson.

Trump is also likely to be challenged in Davos by a growing cohort of climate activists and policymakers. On the same day of his speech, Swedish teen campaigner Greta Thunberg is expected to berate politicians and finance executives who still invest in fossil fuels. Although Trump almost certainly will not heed Thunberg’s call, representatives of major companies attending the forum are desperate to show how they are adapting their business models to accommodate climate concerns.

Two years ago, Schwab drew criticism for what was viewed as an awkwardly ingratiating speech to welcome Trump to the forum. Now, he’s more at odds with the U.S. president, not least on the urgency of the climate crisis.

“We do not want to reach the tipping point of irreversibility on climate change,” Schwab told reporters last week. “We do not want the next generations to inherit a world which becomes ever more hostile and ever less habitable.”

*********

Trump Focuses on Economy at Davos, Seeking a Counter to Impeachment

President Trump made his first appearance on the international stage since the House sent impeachment articles to the Senate, on the day his trial is set to begin in earnest.

By Annie Karni | Published Jan. 21, 2020 Updated 7:01 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 21, 2020 |

DAVOS, Switzerland — Before the Senate impeachment trial began in earnest on Tuesday, President Trump was more than 4,000 miles away from Washington, in this glitzy Alpine village, driving a competing narrative — one that had nothing to do with pressure on Ukraine, abuse of power or obstruction of Congress.

In his first appearance on the international stage since Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent articles of impeachment to the Senate, before the senators who will decide his fate even arrive at the Capitol building, Mr. Trump addressed the World Economic Forum, focusing on the success of the global economy — and taking credit for it.

“America’s economy was in a rather dismal state,” Mr. Trump said. “Before my presidency began, the outlook for many economies was bleak.” In fact, the economy’s recovery after its plummet was central to President Barack Obama’s legacy.

But Mr. Trump called the growth under his leadership a “roaring geyser of opportunity,” and proclaimed that “the American dream is back bigger better and stronger than ever before.”

In his 30-minute address in front of a global audience, Mr. Trump did not mention the impeachment trial back home. But he delivered what amounted to a version of his campaign speech minus the red meat to his base, speaking little of international alliances other than touting America’s supremacy in the world.

Mr. Trump highlighted the first phase of his trade deal with China and another with Mexico and Canada, accomplishments he thinks are being overshadowed by a focus on an impeachment trial he is trying to dismiss as a “hoax.” And the audience appeared receptive — to his face, at least — having warmed to him over the past two years because they have benefited from his policies.

“Lev Parnas is not a topic of conversation at Davos,” said Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, a political research and consulting firm.

Mr. Parnas, an associate of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has been on a nonstop media tour over the past week, asserting that Mr. Trump was fully aware of the pressure campaign to force Ukraine to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals. Democrats have not ruled out trying to call him as a witness.

The open question, as always with Mr. Trump, was how much he would stray from his script and the escape offered by the world stage, and vent his grievances about his legal and political predicament at home. But in his morning address, he stuck largely to his prepared remarks, claiming that his approach was “centered entirely on the well-being of the American worker.”

The president also took a swipe at people demanding action on climate change, the lead agenda item at this year’s conference. Mr. Trump announced that the United States would join the 1 trillion trees initiative launched at the World Economic Forum. But he also declared that “we must reject the perennial prophets of doom.”

Former Vice President Al Gore, who attended Mr. Trump’s speech, declined to comment on his remarks.

It was not clear whether Mr. Trump would try to stage a surprise meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who is also attending the international forum, even though officials said the optics of such a meeting would be unhelpful to Mr. Trump.

In Davos, however, Mr. Trump may find the right audience for support if he sticks with efforts to counter the impeachment narrative at home. There was less anxiety rippling through the one percent set about him on Tuesday than there had been when he first arrived at the annual forum two years ago, fresh off an “America First” campaign filled with promises to rip up international agreements and alliances.

This time, there’s more concern about some of the progressive Democrats running to replace him. Through regulatory rollbacks, tax cuts and the success of the global economy, the president who ran as a populist has benefited many of the chief executives gathered here, even those who have taken public positions against some of his policies.

“There are lot of masters of the universe who think he may not be their cup of tea, but he’s been a godsend,” Mr. Bremmer added. “It’s interesting to hear Mike Bloomberg saying he would fund Bernie Sanders’s campaign if he won the nomination. Very few people here would say that.”

Mr. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, who is himself running for president, has said he is open to spending $1 billion to defeat Mr. Trump, whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee.

During Mr. Trump’s colorful career in New York real estate, entertainment and business, he never cracked the Davos set, whose Fortune 500 chief executives dismissed him as something of a gaudy sideshow.

But the balance of power has shifted. And with progressives like Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts emerging as top-tier candidates in the Democratic primary, a crowd that once rejected Mr. Trump is now more willing to consider him one of their own.

Mr. Trump has happily embraced them back. When he signed an agreement at the White House for the United States-China trade deal, for instance, Mr. Trump credited himself with helping big banks and business.

“I made a lot of bankers look very good,” he said, and told attendees to send his regards to Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.

There are however, still major points of contention ahead during the love-to-hate-it conference for Mr. Trump, who plans to spend almost two days here in bilateral meetings with leaders of Iraq, Pakistan and the Kurdish regional government, as well as sitdowns with corporate chieftains. (The forum is also Mr. Trump’s first trip abroad since the drone attack that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most important military official.)

Global warming and climate change top the agenda items for the conference. A star speaker on Tuesday, alongside Mr. Trump, is the 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has said she wouldn’t “waste her time” speaking to Mr. Trump about climate change.

Mr. Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, and his administration has expanded the use of coal, downplayed concerns about climate change and rolled back environmental protections.

The president mocked Ms. Thunberg, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum, after she was chosen as Time magazines Person of the Year. “So ridiculous,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”

Attendees at the conference said they fully expected Mr. Trump to take another whack at her while she was here.

In 2018, Mr. Trump was the first sitting president to attend the forum since President Bill Clinton did so in 2000. Last year, he abruptly canceled his plans to attend, citing a partial government shutdown.

This year, the administration delegation includes Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, as well as Robert Lighthizer, the trade representative. Other members of the administration who were expected to attend the forum were Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary; Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, and Eugene Scalia, the labor secretary.

Mr. Trump was also expected to be joined in Davos by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter Ivanka Trump, both senior White House advisers.

*********

Ms. Thunberg is the only adult in the room speaking truth to power. Greta is not an extremist, although her demands will be portrayed as extreme. Unfortunately for all of us, she’s a realist. It’s past time to pay lip service to the problem of climate change and global warming, because, as Greta so often says, our house is indeed on fire.

Greta Thunberg’s Message at Davos Forum: ‘Our House Is Still on Fire’

By Somini Sengupta, Reporting from the World Economic Forum in Davos | Published Jan. 21, 2020 Updated 9:45 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 21, 2020 |

DAVOS, Switzerland — Greta Thunberg on Tuesday punched a hole in the promises emerging from a forum of the global political and business elite and offered instead an ultimatum: Stop investing in fossil fuels immediately, or explain to your children why you did not protect them from the “climate chaos” you created.

“I wonder, what will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing the climate chaos you knowingly brought upon them?” Ms. Thunberg, 17, said at the annual gathering of the world’s rich and powerful in Davos, a village on the icy reaches of the Swiss Alps.

Her remarks opened a panel discussion hosted by The New York Times and the World Economic Forum. The full transcript is available here.

“Our house is still on fire,” she added, reprising her most famous line from an address last year at the forum. “Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour.”

Her remarks came at a time when climate change and environmental sustainability rose to the top of the talking points of many of the executives and government leaders assembled at Davos.

Ms. Thunberg, a climate activist known for speaking bluntly to power, rebuked the crowd for promises that she said would do too little: reducing planet-warming gases to net zero by 2050, offsetting emissions by planting one trillion trees, transitioning to a low-carbon economy.

“Let’s be clear. We don’t need a ‘low carbon economy.’ We don’t need to ‘lower emissions,’” she said. “Our emissions have to stop.”

Only that, she said, would enable the world to keep temperatures from rising past 1.5 degrees from preindustrial levels, which scientists say is necessary to avert the worst effects of climate change. She and a group of young climate activists have called on private investors and governments to immediately halt exploration for fossil fuels, to stop funding their production, to end taxpayer subsidies for the industry and to fully divest their existing stakes in the sector.

Scientists have said emissions must be reduced by half in the next decade to reach the 1.5-degree target. The opposite is happening. Global emissions continued to rise, hitting a record high in 2019, according to research published in December.

Her address began barely an hour after President Trump’s speech at the forum, which barely mentioned climate change, except to implicitly describe climate activists as “heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers.” Ms. Thunberg did not address him directly, except to remind the audience that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement by the end of this year.

Ms. Thunberg took pains to distance herself from politics. “This is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics,” she said. “From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left as well as the center have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency.”

*********

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thecomicsnexus · 6 years ago

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Heroes for Hope

HEROES FOR HOPE DECEMBER 1985 BY CHRIS CLAREMONT, ANN NOCENTI, JIM STARLIN, JIM SHOOTER, STAN LEE, ED BRYANT, LOUISE SIMONSON, STEPHEN KING, BILL MANTLO, ALAN MOORE, HARLAN ELLISON, JO DUFFY, MIKE BARON, DENNY O’NEIL, GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, BRUCE JONES, STEVE ENGLEHART, MIKE GRELL, ARCHIE GOODWIN, BERNIE WRIGHTSON...

JOHN ROMITA JR, JOHN BUSCEMA, BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, CHARLES VESS, RICHARD CORBEN, MIKE KALUTA, FRANK MILLER, BRIAN BOLLAND, JOHN BOLTON, STEVE RUDE, BRET BLEVINS, HERB TRIMPE, GRAY MORROW, PAUL GULACY, ALAN WEISS, JACKSON GUICE, HOWARD CHAYKIN...

AL GORDON, KLAUS JANSON, JOE SINNOTT, TERRY AUSTIN, DAN GREEN, JEFF JONES, JON J MUTH, TOM PALMER, AL MILGROM, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, P. CRAIG RUSSELL, CARL POTTS, AL WILLIAMSON, SAL BUSCEMA, BOB LAYTON, JOE RUBINSTEIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, WALT SIMONSON...

DAINA GRAZIUNAS, MARIE SEVERIN, BOB SHAREN, PETRA SCOTESE, CHRISTIE SCHEELE, MICHELLE WRIGHTSON, GLYNIS OLIVER, GEORGE ROUSSOS, LESLIE ZAHLER AND JANET JACKSON (NOT THAT JANET JACKSON)

SYNOPSIS

The X-men are attacked by a strange entity that makes them feel despair and end up going to Ethiopia to help people against the famine (and fighting this entity after a while).

OFFICIAL CONTEXT

CONTEXT BY CHRISTOPHER PRIEST

The most heated racial episode in my career occurred during Marvel's production of their charity book for Ethiopian famine victims. Promoted as work from "the top writers and artists in the industry-- the very best of the very best," profits from this effort were going to be donated to help the poor starving Africans. It was a truly noble effort, one the entire industry rallied behind (at least until DC decided to do their own book, thus dividing the talent pool along company lines). Denys Cowan dropped by and mentioned, amused, that he'd seen the list of talent working on the famine relief project. There wasn't a single African American creator invited to participate. This actually amused me tremendously, and I went over the list myself to make sure, but, yup, no blacks had been thought of as, "the very best of the very best," and none were invited to work on this book.

Tickled, I picked up the phone and called Larry Hama, telling him no blacks were on the list. Larry was hugely amused, and suggested we do our own charity relief book for the poor white trash of Appalachia. He and I howled with laughter, and then shook off the dumbness of it all and got on with our lives.

Only, a white staffer had overheard part of the conversation (I assume the notion of my "recruiting" Hama to do my "own alternate charity book"), and some warped interpretation of my conversation with Hama got reported down the hall to the X-MEN office (where the book was being developed). The editors became incensed and loudly demanded my head on a plate for, essentially, inciting the black talent to stop working for Marvel. I mean, this thing got blown to huge proportions, so much so that, by the end of the day, it was largely accepted as fact that I was organizing a walkout of black talent, and the EIC kind of put me and the X-Men editor in a room to negotiate a deal.

I just couldn't stop laughing. I mean, it was all so stupid. These were stupid people. It was extremely stupid to do an African relief charity project and not invite any damned Africans to work on it. It was even sillier for these stupid people to invent some massive protest out of a silly joke in a 30-second phone call with Larry Hama.

The X-Men Ed was not amused, and refused to believe me when I said I had no intention of bad-mouthing the project. I was invited to participate, but I just chuckled and said, "No affirmative action, please." And this just set the Ed off into a screaming match that could be heard everywhere in the office, "What is WRONG with you? Why do you have to make a RACIAL ISSUE OUT OF EVERYTHING?!?!?!"

It just got out of control, and the episode (along with my paying my assistant to stay home on MLK's birthday once it was ratified as a national holiday but Marvel refused to recognize it, other than the numbingly patronizing "We got us our own holiday" speech by Luke Cage in the VISION & SCARLET WITCH Miniseries) fairly cemented my pariah status at Marvel. Without saying a word and without actually doing anything, I was routinely assumed to be some radical activist who saw everything as a race issue.

I felt trapped in a world of loons. It was totally no-win, and I tended to simply withdraw from the office more and more, from people who, in my view, had now invented a justification to do what they'd been doing all along: fencing themselves off from me.

CONTEXT BY JIM SHOOTER

Pam had arranged for Oxfam America to receive our donation. Their reaction to our offer, at first, was what one might expect from people who had never seen a comic book up close: “Comic book? There’s nothing funny about famine!” Sigh.

For some reason Pam was determined that we should donate the money to them, though, and we convinced them that comics weren’t always comic. They still demanded to review the finished book before they would commit to accept our donation.

When the book was ready to go to press, we sent a mock-up to Oxfam America to review.

Their response was that they wanted nothing to do with it. Flat rejection.

Furthermore, they said that the book was unbelievably offensive and that we, the people of Marvel Comics, were racist, sexist and reprehensible.

When this was told to me by Pam and Marvel President Jim Galton I felt as if I were being called on the carpet. I was flabbergasted. I showed them the mock-up.

They didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Galton called the exec at Oxfam America we’d been dealing with to ask what their specific objections were.

Their response was that, while under no circumstances would they have anything to do with our project or with us, they would send an executive to meet with us and explain the many horrific, repugnant, disgusting elements that made our “comic book” anathema.

So they did. Oxfam America’s representative came to meet with Galton and me. The meeting took place in Galton’s office.

I do not remember the man’s name.

He was a nice-looking, thirty-something man. He had on a suit that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. Designer shoes. He had on more gold and diamond jewelry than I’d ever seen on a human being. Jeweled watch. Cufflinks. Stickpin. Bracelets. A neck chain that would make a rapper blush. Doubt me, go ahead. Discount by two-thirds what I’m telling you and you should still have an image of a guy wearing clothes and jewelry that at market price would feed a thousand starving people for a month.

After the greetings and handshaking, Galton, making conversation, said that he imagined that Oxfam America and other charitable organizations had, at least, gotten a lot of people to focus on the ongoing tragedy in Africa, and had inspired many efforts such as ours from musicians and performers and artists.

This Oxfam America fellow, let’s call him Midas, just plain gushed about how good for business the East African famine was, how donations were rolling in at record levels. He talked about the millions dying as if it were a great marketing opportunity.

Galton and I were stupefied. We couldn’t believe how thrilled Midas was that his business was booming.

Midas explained that the purpose of his visit wasn’t here to request changes or negotiate. He had come to save us from our own folly. He made it clear that Oxfam America had nothing but contempt for us and our work. He came as a favor, to urge us not to publish the abomination that we had created. He assured us that it would destroy Marvel Comics.

Right. Well, naturally, I wondered why.

Midas flipped through the mock-up. Again and again he pointed out black characters that he said “looked like Michael Jackson.” We were obviously trying to capitalize on Michael Jackson’s image and fame.

Michael Jackson in particular and the Jackson family in general were huge supporters of Oxfam America, by the way. Every drawing of a woman, he said, was sexist and exploitative. He was particularly offended by depictions of Storm, which he thought were more than sexist, a denigration of women of color.

I mentioned that the men were heroic and glamorous, too. Just like in the movies, stars tend to be good looking.

He pointed out a panel in which Chris had a carnival barker saying: “Yowza….” That, he said, was racist in the extreme. I don’t have the book handy, as explained above, but wasn’t that character Caucasian?

Moore and Corben’s pages? Yikes.

I cannot begin to tell you all the racism, sexism and hate that he (and Oxfam America) read into the words and pictures.

Wow.

The punch line is this: Midas accused Marvel of “stealing Janet Jackson’s logo.” He believed that the Heroes for Hope logo, credited to Janet Jackson, was ripped off.

I offered to introduce him to the designer on our staff who had created the logo, one Miss Janet Claire Jackson. He dismissed my obvious attempt at a cover-up.

No, really, we have a designer named…. Oh, never mind.

No wonder Janet Claire Jackson eventually started going by the name “Blog Elf.”

Finally, the lunatic left. Galton and I shared a moment of “what a jerk.”

Pam was instructed to find some other organization to which to donate the money. She came up with the American Friends Service Committee.

Heroes for Hope was a huge success. Thanks to our sales department, we got donations from downstream—distributors, retailers, even fans.

Can’t find the press release and the picture of me and Galton giving the AFSC honchos the PR “Big Check” created by our production department to symbolize the real check. I think the initial donation was $500,000. Much more came later.

It was a great thing. Jim Starlin, Bernie Wrightson, Ann Nocenti and Chris Claremont are great heroes in my book. Heroes for hope. There are people alive today who wouldn’t be without their efforts.

AND ABOUT THOSE STEPHEN KING PAGES

The non-comics writers who participated needed some help in most cases, which Ann and Chris provided. The biggest challenge was Stephen King’s contribution. I may be exaggerating here, but not by much—he gave us something like 5,000 words for three pages. Almost overnight, by the way. Chris, Ann and I somehow cut that down to what would fit on three comics pages. 500 words? I forget. Has anyone else ever had to cut out 90% of Stephen King’s brilliant words?

REVIEW

This was bound to not be a nice comic-book to review. The famine in Ethiopia at the moment had political origins that people decided to look over in favor of Live Aid and We Are The World.

Let’s just say that sending super-heroes there to help doesn’t guarantee a success (although they could have done something more against politicians, but let’s not go there).

The story is a bit abstract and the characters pretty much end up making sense of it without ever checking their facts (like the entity being a mutant and why it exists). The sequences about each X-man being tortured psychologically was too repetitive. By the time they end up in Africa (something that happens on a wild guess), the book is almost over.

The art doesn’t have a nice unifying feel. Something that could have been possible with breakdowns and less inkers and colorists.

But you know what? I understand why it had to be like that. This book was made ad honorem, and people did a great effort to just put the damn thing on the stands.

My other concern is that the X-men weren’t the right fit for a story like this. I understand they were popular back then, but these comics should attract non-readers as well (it’s for a good cause after all). And to be frank, things like Rachel Summers, Storm not having powers, Magneto being the leader... those are things of that time. Very hard to relate to. The Avengers would have been a better choice, or even Spider-man and the Fantastic Four (even if Spidey was looking a bit different at the time).

I like the message of not losing hope, and hope being the one thing keeping people alive in such tragedies... but then they kind of go back home. Leaving hope?

I don’t think the ideas in the book were brought down on something concrete or to keep thinking on. It is just confusing.

I give the book a score of 5

#heroes for hope #famine #marvel comics #x-men #1985 #comics #review #modern age #live aid #arthur adams

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ronaldsmcrae86 · 4 years ago

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36 Underrated Ways to Find PAID Freelance Writing Jobs in 2021

Whether you’re a seasoned freelance writer or a new writer with no experience, freelance writing jobs that pay are still plentiful in 2021 — if:

You know where to look…

You know how to promote yourself…

And you know how to differentiate yourself from your fellow writers.

That’s where we come in.

If you’re a copywriter, blogger, or any type of freelance writer who wants to earn a full-time or part-time income doing what you love, this definitive, A-to-Z guide will help you do just that.

Let’s dive in.

Chapter One: 6 Steps to Help You Prepare (& Land More Freelance Writing Gigs)

The philosopher Seneca (allegedly) said, “luck is what happens when practice meets opportunity.”

The book of Galatians in the Bible tells us we reap what we sow.

Stephen King put it this way:

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

The common theme? Success tends to find those who are prepared for it.

As a writer, here are six things you should do to prepare for freelancing glory:

1. Create a Writing Portfolio That Kicks Butt

“Do you have writing samples?” “Can I see some of your freelance writing work?” “What are some high-quality articles you’ve written?”

As a freelance writer, you’ll hear questions like these often.

And your answer?

Here’s a link to my writing portfolio.

At least, that should be your answer. But unfortunately, many freelancers skip the whole “prove you actually know how to write” thing.

As Scott Weiland once sang, “let the proof be in the pudding, sugar.”

Don’t simply tell prospective clients that you’re a talented freelance writer. And don’t assume they already know you’re the cat’s meow and the bee’s knees.

Show them.

Further Reading: How to Create a Writing Portfolio That’ll Wow Potential Clients walks you through everything you need to craft an online portfolio of your work, from portfolio sites like Contently to using your own blog. It also offers tips for building a list of writing samples if your portfolio is a bit sparse.

2. Supercharge Your Writing Skills

Unless you want to spend your freelance writing career slumming through online content mills with entry-level job ads that pay peanuts, you need to level up your content creation skills.

Because those high-paying freelance content jobs you lay awake dreaming about? Companies don’t hand them to just anyone.

They give them to the best writers — content creators who:

Realize the importance of SEO (search engine optimization) and can create SEO content with both readers and Google in mind;

Understand the importance of proofreading and submitting error-free work;

Write fast, meet deadlines for their writing projects, and are seemingly immune to writer’s block;

Craft amazing headlines, write with clarity, and support their points with examples;

Have top-notch communication skills;

Can connect with readers on an emotional level.

The good news?

With hard work, anyone can improve their writing skills. And for the few who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do it, the payoff can be huge.

This site is filled with helpful how-to articles on copywriting, content writing, writing contests, content marketing, article writing, and SEO writing. And if you need training, we have that too.

Further Reading: 18 Writing Tips That’ll Actually Make You a Better Writer shares our favorite must-have skills for writers. Read it, bookmark it, and come back to it again and again.

3. Ask for Testimonials

Have you already landed a writing job or two? Awesome.

Did you ask the client to give you a testimonial? A few words declaring their undying love and/or satisfaction with your work (that you can use to help you land more writing clients)?

No? Well, you’re not alone.

Most writers who do freelance work, either due to ignorance or fear, don’t ask for testimonials. Our own Jon Morrow says he’s only had a small handful of writers over the years ask him for a testimonial — even though he would’ve been perfectly happy to give one to them.

So how should you ask for one? Keep it simple.

Here’s how Karen MacKenzie asked for a testimonial after we published her first post on Smart Blogger:

“Would it be possible to get a testimonial for my website? I know you are really busy, but I’d really appreciate it.”

And because Karen did such a good job on her post, I was happy to give her the following testimonial:

Karen offers everything I look for in a freelance writer: Her work is excellent, she finishes on time (if not ahead of schedule), and her attention to detail is wonderful. I enjoyed working with her so much that, as soon as her first article was completed, I asked her if she’d like to write for us again. I happily recommend her.

Want a great testimonial like Karen’s?

Create testimonial-worthy content for your clients and then — this is key — ask them for a freakin’ testimonial.

Note: You can count me among the poor, unfortunate souls who missed out on Jon’s generosity. Before becoming Smart Blogger’s Editor-in-Chief, I was a freelancer. I wrote five posts for Smart Blogger as a freelance writer, which means I passed on five opportunities for Jon to say nice things about me. Don’t repeat my mistakes — ask for testimonials at every opportunity.

4. Learn How to Craft a Killer Author Bio

Picture it:

A wealthy business owner sitting in a Herman Miller chair on top of a rug made out of recycled Herman Miller chairs is reading an article you’ve written.

She’s impressed. She calls to her butler, Jeeves, and asks him to bring one of her suitcases filled with money.

Your article is so good, she wants to hire you.

But then she gets to your byline — the one you threw together at the last minute. The one that lists your hobbies and has no clear call to action.

“Throw the suitcase in the fire, Jeeves,” she says. “I shan’t be hiring a writer today.”

If you don’t want this totally realistic scenario to happen to you, you need to get really good at writing author bios.

Why?

Because someone who’s made it to your author bio is primed. They’ve read your work and want to learn about the attractive, intelligent individual who wrote it.

Maybe they want to check out your website content. Maybe they want to find you on social media so they can follow you.

Or maybe they want your contact info so they can hire you.

A byline should shout to the world your expertise. It should say to prospective clients, “if you thought this article was great, you should hire me and see what I can do for you.”

Taking the time to craft a great one is time well spent.

Further Reading: How to Write a Bio Like a Superhero (Easy 3-Part Process) will show you the step-by-step process for crafting bylines that’ll make rich people want to give you suitcases full of money.

5. Know How to Write a Pitch

Few people enjoy cold pitching to prospective clients.

But you know what?

The job seekers who are willing to do it have an edge. And the ones who are good at it — and I mean really freakin’ good at it — are never more than an email or two away from snagging a new writing job.

So how do you get really freakin’ good at cold pitches? For starters, don’t make these rookie mistakes:

Don’t write long emails. Editors and clients are busy. Respect their time.

Don’t send the exact same pitch to different people. Every editor and every client has unique needs, audiences, and styles.

Don’t ignore their guidelines. Want a sure-fire way to have your email deleted? Pitch to a website that has clearly stated submission guidelines, but ignore said guidelines.

But just as importantly, do these things:

Research. Do your homework.

Find the name of the person you’re pitching to. Address the person by name in your email.

Get to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. Tell them what you want and why.

Sell them on you. Popular websites receive pitches all the time. Why should they hire you? Explain it to them.

These pointers and more (as well as email templates) can be found in our post, How to Write a Pitch That’ll Wow Editors & Clients.

Read it, bookmark it, and reference it often.

6. Learn the Legal Side of Freelancing

One of the big, scary unknowns when you’re working online is how to handle the “legal side” of things.

Should you have contracts with your freelance clients? How do you send invoices? What about taxes?

The legalities can seem so scary and daunting that many freelance writers choose to stick their heads in the sand and ignore them — or, worse, give up on their freelancing dreams rather than have to deal with any of it.

That’s why we put together this resource:

The Definitive Guide to Freelance Contracts, Invoices, & Taxes

If you’re a freelance writer or any kind of self-employed contractor, it’s a resource you’ll want to bookmark.

Chapter Two: 16 Hacks for Finding Under-the-Radar Writing Opportunities

Anyone can find a job board and search for a freelance writing job.

But that’s both a good and bad thing — anyone can do it.

That awesome writing job you found online? The one you’d be perfect for? Fifty other “perfect” people found it too.

We’ll go over some great job board options in a moment (because they do have lots to offer new freelance writers), but first, we’ll take a trip down the road less traveled.

By knowing how to identify hidden opportunities many of your fellow freelancers don’t know about (or do know about, but are too lazy to pursue), you can find writing jobs from well-paying clients who fly under the radar.

For example, did you know you could…

1. Use Twitter to Reverse-Engineer Online Writing Jobs

Want an outside-the-box way to find writing job opportunities?

Try Twitter’s advanced search engine.

In the example below, I searched for tweets that included the phrase “writer wanted”:

I kept the search simple, but I could’ve also searched by language (native English, Spanish, etc.), hashtags, date range, and more. The more options you choose, the more refined your search results.

Click “Search” and you’ll see a list of tweets with various job postings for writers:

Scroll through the list and tweak your job search, as needed.

Some of the results will be scams, but most will be legitimate. Many will be for remote writing jobs, but some will be location-specific (usually New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Washington D.C., Dallas, Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Portland, Oklahoma City, Greenville, Atlanta, and other major cities in the United States). Just skip over the ones that don’t apply to you.

If you look at “Top” tweets, as shown in the screenshot above, you’ll find brand-new freelance jobs mixed with older ones. Click “Latest” if you want to see recent tweets first.

Tip: When you find a tweet for a job that shows promise, click Twitter’s like/heart icon. That way you’ll be able to easily find your shortlisted tweets later.

The nice thing about Twitter’s advanced search feature is it’s only limited by your imagination.

Want to find guest blogging opportunities (since many websites these days pay for guest posts)? Enter “guest post” into the “this exact phrase” option and you’ll see every tweet written by someone looking to promote their latest guest blogging masterpiece.

That’ll give you a list of websites that accept guest posts, which you can later whittle down (after you’ve done a little more research) into a list of sites that pay guest writers.

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

2. Follow Leads on Social Media

When you use Twitter’s advanced search feature for finding freelance writing jobs online, you’ll discover certain Twitter handles pop up fairly frequently.

One example is @write_jobs:

When you find a good lead, follow them. That way you can cut through the noise of Twitter and go straight to your best sources.

Even better?

Add them to a private Twitter list so that tweets from all your leads can be found in one handy repository.

Here’s how you do it:

Here are a few more handles to get your Twitter list started:

@FreelanceWJ

@WhoPaysWriters

@jjobs_tweets

3. Check Out Agency Job Postings

Everyone likes to talk about job boards (which, again, we’ll discuss in a moment). But you know what resource most freelance writers ignore?

Agencies.

Per Jon:

One of the best potential clients is agencies because they usually have an ongoing need for writers. Instead of only getting paid once, you can develop a relationship with a few and get new freelance blogging gigs for months or even years into the future. How to Become a Freelance Writer, Starting from Scratch

So how can you get work from agencies? Well, you could contact them directly and ask if they have any freelance work (Jon calls this a “gutsy but effective approach”).

The other way is to keep checking their “career” page:

The Content Marketing Institute maintains a detailed database of agencies. Click here to check it out.

4. Find (and Woo) Clients on Their Turf

Most articles that tout social media as a good place to find leads will point you to Facebook Groups.

And it makes sense. After all, search Facebook for “writing jobs”, click the “Groups” tab, and you’ll see dozens and dozens of options that are open to the public:

If you’re looking for a safe space where like-minded individuals offer tips, advice, and writing inspiration; such groups are great.

But if you’re looking to find paying gigs, you’ll likely be left wanting.

Most members of these groups are looking to be hired, not looking to hire writers. And when someone wanting to hire a writer does come along, the person who raises their hand first is usually the one who gets the job.

That’s not to say Facebook Groups can’t lead to writing jobs that pay. The trick is you need to find groups where the buyers, not the sellers, hang out.

Think “masterminds”, “think tanks”, etc.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Such groups are usually private. So, what’s a writer to do?

Skip the Facebook Groups. Go Straight to the Sources.

One of the amazing things about technology is the way it allows us to connect and interact with people with whom we’d otherwise never have the opportunity.

In 2014, I didn’t know Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard. But I joined his mailing list and, lo and behold, a “welcome” email with his address arrived in my inbox. I responded, he wrote me back, and a friendship was born.

After reading one of her posts and admiring her writing style, I connected with Henneke Duistermaat of Enchanting Marketing through a humble blog comment. The same was true with Syed Balkhi. I connected with Pamela Wilson via Twitter. For Jon Morrow, the man who would one day hire me at Smart Blogger, I got on his radar by becoming a student in one of his online courses.

Want to write for a mover and shaker in your industry? Want to befriend an influencer who can open doors for you (the kind of doors that lead to paying jobs)?

Make a connection. Be generous. Give without asking or expecting anything in return.

That means following them on Twitter, sharing their content, and interacting with them. It means subscribing to their email list.

And, yes, it may mean buying one of their products. Because here’s the thing:

When you’re their student, an influencer is invested in your future. Your success is their success. You’re a walking, talking testimonial. So many — not all, but many — will do everything they can to help you succeed.

And that includes pointing leads in your direction.

5. Pitch to Software Company Blogs

More from Jon:

You want to work with businesses that have money to spend on marketing. Chances are, those companies are subscribed to various apps for email marketing, analytics, and so on. Most software companies in the marketing space (like HubSpot, Sumo, PayPal, Ahrefs, etc.) also publish a great deal of content. So, who better to write for? You’re instantly getting in front of thousands of the right clients. Many of these blogs will also pay you to write for them, so in many cases, you can get your first client while also prospecting for clients.

e-Commerce companies with blogs tend to publish a lot of content. After all, every article they publish tends to pay for itself (and then some) thanks to the traffic it brings to the website — traffic that often leads to sales of their product.

As with agencies, you can either cold pitch the software companies (which sometimes works), or you can keep an eye out for open freelance positions:

6. Don’t Be Scared of Ghostwriting

A lot of writers don’t like the idea of ghostwriting.

I get it. You’re letting someone else put their name on and take credit for your hard work.

You mean I get to spend weeks pouring my heart and soul into a piece of content, infusing every syllable with my very essence to the point I no longer know where I begin and my words end, and no one will ever know I wrote it?

Yes, that’s ghostwriting in a nutshell (minus the theatrics). But here’s the thing:

Ghostwriting pays better than regular freelance writing. When you ghostwrite, it’s not unheard of to increase your fee by 15%-20% (or more).

The opportunities in ghostwriting are virtually endless. You could ghostwrite blog posts, articles, scripts used on YouTube channels, or even books sold on Amazon.

You can make great freelance writing business relationships by ghostwriting. People who pay for ghostwriters tend to have money (and connections). Oftentimes, these clients can refer you to others.

If your primary goal is to build up a strong list of writing samples, ghostwriting isn’t for you.

But if your goal is to make money writing and build potentially profitable business relationships, it’s something to consider.

And here’s the best part:

Because so many freelance writers loathe ghostwriting, there isn’t as much competition.

Editor’s Note: These next few freelance writing hacks come courtesy of Smart Blogger Certified Content Marketer Germano Silveira.

7. Find Clients Who are Already Hiring Successful Freelance Writers in Your Niche

Want to write for great clients in your niche who pay top dollar?

Well, you can either wait until they post job ads, then compete against everyone else who applies…

Or you can take initiative and proactively seek out these ideal clients.

One of the best places to find ideal clients is in the portfolios of successful freelance writers in your niche.

By studying other writers’ sample content, you can identify clients they’ve worked with in the past.

These clients are ideal targets because:

You already know they hire freelance writers;

You know they have years of experience working with freelancers, so they’ll be easier to work with;

And you know they pay decent wages, otherwise the successful freelance writer wouldn’t work with them.

Start by finding freelance writers in your niche. You can find them by Googling “[YOUR NICHE] + freelance writer” like so:

Scroll through the search results until you see a freelance writer’s website. These writing sites don’t always rank highly, so you may have to go through several pages of search results to find them.

Click on a writer’s website and check out their portfolio. There you’ll find links to articles the freelance writer wrote for various companies in your niche.

Click on a writing sample and visit the client’s website to make sure you’d be interested in writing for them. If everything looks good, add them to your list of potential targets.

Do this over and over again for every freelance writer you find in your search. When you’re done, you should have a big list of ideal clients to target.

Pick one client to target and visit their website.

Study their content to get an idea of what they publish. Pay close attention to their most popular content, as well as the article the freelance writer wrote for them. These will give you a good idea of what type of content to pitch.

Check their website for submission guidelines, which will give you a better sense of what they’re looking for from freelance writers and tell you who to send your pitch to.

Use all of this reconnaissance to brainstorm ideas for good articles to pitch them. Pick your best idea, develop it into a pitch, and send it in.

8. Apprentice With a Successful Writer in Your Niche

Another way to get work from established freelance writers is to build a mutually-beneficial partnership with them.

Many successful freelance writers need help with certain aspects of their business. They could use someone to do their research, proofreading, copy editing jobs, etc.

Of course, they could pay a professional writer or do these tasks themselves. But most would prefer to have someone do it for free.

That’s where you come in.

By offering free assistance to a successful freelancer in your niche, you can save them time and help them make more money in exchange for steady work and writing experience.

Often, successful freelance writers have to turn down work because the client can’t afford to pay their rate. Instead, they can pass this work off to you and split the earnings (again, more money in their pocket).

They can also help you by critiquing your work, giving you tips on how to succeed in the industry, and endorsing you to editors.

Once they trust you and you’ve proven yourself as a writer, they may also let you do some assignments for them.

Successful digital marketing entrepreneur Dan Lok got his start in the copywriting industry this way — by apprenticing with his copywriting mentor Alan Jacques:

“Why did this work out so well? It wasn’t worth Alan’s time for that price, but it was worth my time, because I wanted the experience. I needed clients to gain experience and get better. I got my clients with his endorsement and supervision.” — Dan Lok

So how do you start such an arrangement?

It’s not easy, and there’s no direct path. But your best bet is to buy one of their courses or products. As mentioned earlier, when you become their student, they become invested in your success.

You can also try:

Getting an introduction from someone who knows them;

Connecting with them on social and building a relationship;

Creating a piece of content (perhaps copy for a landing page?) they could use and giving it to them for free.

9. Reverse-Engineer Writing Samples From Job Ads

Ultimately, most clients don’t care about your experience or credentials. They just want a freelance writer who can complete their assignment and get results.

Your job is to convince them YOU are that freelance writer.

And the best way to convince them you can do the assignment is… to do the assignment.

Most job ads ask for relevant writing samples. When applying to these ads, most freelancers provide similar writing samples.

In other words, they provide articles they wrote for another client that sort of match what the ad is looking for, but not really. Unless they’ve written for an identical client before, their writing samples will be a bit off.

You can immediately differentiate yourself from other applicants and increase your odds of getting hired by creating a writing sample tailor-made for each client.

Start by finding job ads on job sites like Upwork.

Don’t just look for any old job. Get specific with your search criteria to find ideal jobs — jobs that are in your niche, about subjects that interest you, and offer to pay premium prices.

When you come across an ideal job description, study it from top to bottom. Make note of everything the client is looking for in a writer and the assignment.

Then brainstorm ideas for articles that perfectly match what the client wants. If necessary, research tactics and techniques for creating such content.

For example, in the screenshot above, the client is seeking someone who can “write about boring, dry, technical topics.” You could Google, “how to write about boring topics”, then apply what you find to your sample article.

Select your strongest idea and write it. Try to pick a short, simple idea that won’t take too much time to write. Otherwise, the client may hire someone else before you finish.

Finally, apply to the job and submit your tailor-made content as a writing sample. You can either publish the article on a free site like Medium or submit it with your application as a Microsoft Word or Google Doc.

The best part of this strategy?

Even if the client doesn’t hire you, you’ll still walk away with a strong writing sample to add to your portfolio. And if you repeat this process, you’ll quickly build a portfolio of writing samples that are super-relevant to your ideal clients.

10. Pitch Every Service You’ve Used in the Last Year

If you’re a beginner freelance writer, one of the best places to find writing gigs is with the companies/products you already use.

They make great potential clients because:

You’re already familiar with the product/service;

You’re in their target market, so writing for their audience is easier;

You already have a relationship with these large and small businesses.

In fact, you should include these points in your pitch.

Start by making a list of every product/service you’ve used in the last year. This can include gyms, hair salons, landscapers, etc.

Visit their websites and perform a content audit:

Are there problems with their web copy you could offer to improve?

Do they have a regularly-updated blog? Could you contribute to it in an impactful way? Could you help them target certain keywords with their content?

Basically, you’re trying to match the services you offer with the content they need.

While you may be able to convince these companies to start a blog, the best targets are companies that understand the importance of content marketing and invest in it accordingly.

Once you’ve identified your targets and how you can help them, send an email to someone on their marketing team offering your services.

Your pitch should mention you’ve used their product/service and love it, as well as the fact you’re a member of their target market and will be able to effectively influence their audience.

Offer to work for a price you think they can afford, based on your research. You may not get paid top-dollar initially, but the real goal is to establish a working relationship, get steady work, and contribute to your portfolio.

By sending out 30 such emails, Julie Wilson was able to generate over $1,000 in her first month employing this strategy.

11. Write Tutorials for Products You’ve Used

This tip is similar to the previous one in that you’ll be soliciting a business you’re familiar with.

However, this technique differs because it involves writing articles on spec — creating articles for free before you pitch them.

Make a list of products you’ve used that fall into your freelance writing niche. For example, if you want to become a SaaS writer, make a list of software you use or have used in the past.

Visit the websites of these companies to determine if they’re good prospects. Look for companies with well-established, regularly-updated blogs.

Check to see if they have submission guidelines, which will give you information on the type of content they’re looking for and let you know if they hire freelance writers and/or accept guest posts.

Then write a tutorial (that includes a thorough product description) on how to use their product to achieve a desired result. If possible, create a case study describing the results you achieved with the product and how you did so.

Contact someone in the company via email or LinkedIn. Tell them you’re about to publish the article on Medium (or some other blog) and were wondering if:

They want to publish it on their blog instead;

They’d be willing to share and/or link to the article once you’ve published it.

Even if they don’t buy the article, you’ll add another writing sample to your portfolio while establishing a relationship with a potential client who may keep you in mind for future work.

12. Find and Fix Weak/Old Content

By now, we’ve established the benefit of demonstrating your value to potential clients in advance.

Another way to demonstrate value is by improving their weak, flawed, or outdated content.

You’d be surprised by how many influential, well-established organizations have flawed web content.

Often, these organizations are so preoccupied with creating new content they overlook small errors or forget to update their content to meet new developments.

That’s where you come in.

By identifying weak spots and fixing them for free, you can establish a relationship with a potential client that gets your foot in the door.

Of course, you shouldn’t just visit hundreds of random websites hoping to find bad copy or content. Think of how time-consuming and unbearably boring that would be.

Instead, make a list of 10 to 20 blogs, companies, or influencers you’d most like to write for.

Visit their websites, analyze their content, and make note of areas you can improve.

Look for older content that could use an update. For example, a headline like “How to be a freelance writer in 2016” is a great candidate for modernization.

(On the other hand, something like “Google Authorship: The Complete Handbook for Getting Respect, Readers, and Rankings” wouldn’t work because its main topic, “Google authorship”, is no longer relevant.)

Dan Lok used a similar tactic to get work from guerrilla marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson. Dan rewrote Jay’s entire sales pitch on spec and sent it to him. Not only did Jay use the updated sales copy and pay Dan for his spec work, but the new copy tripled Jay’s conversions!

Maybe you’re not a copywriting expert like Dan. But if you find a website with weak or unremarkable sales copy, you could try researching the subject and giving it a shot. At the very least, this makes for good practice.

Once you’ve identified and updated your content, send an email to your target explaining what you did.

Tell them you came across their website or blog article, noticed some flaws, and thought you could help them out by improving it.

While they may offer to pay you for your work like Jay did, I don’t recommend trying to sell it to them.

The true power of this tactic is you’re establishing a relationship by being helpful and demonstrating value upfront. And it works best when done for free.

Trying to sell them your work can come off as opportunistic, arrogant, and reduce the chances they’ll bite.

But if you help them for free and they like your work, they may decide to pay you (like Jay did) and/or keep you in mind for future assignments.

13. Dominate Quora

Quora is a social media platform where users can post questions and get answers from other users.

Whether or not you get clients from Quora, it’s an insanely useful marketing platform for writers that allows you to:

Connect with people in your niche in a helpful way and demonstrate your expertise;

Show potential clients you can write for their audience;

Generate long-term traffic from each answer you post (popular Quora questions and answers often get ranked in Google);

Establish yourself as an authority in your niche and build an audience, both of which make you more attractive to potential clients.

Networking on Quora can be an effective, albeit indirect, method for getting freelance writing jobs online.

The essence of a Quora marketing strategy is this:

Find questions that are relevant to your niche; provide helpful, in-depth answers that demonstrate your writing skill; and advertise your writing services in your profile.

Start by creating a stellar Quora profile.

Treat your Quora profile like your freelance business website. You should include your position as a freelance writer, a high-quality profile picture, a description of the benefits of your services, and links to your writing samples and website.

In the “Credentials & Highlights” section, list all of the credentials and experiences that reinforce your position as an authority in your niche.

In the “Knows About” section, be sure to include topics related to your writing niche as well as your role as a freelance writer (SEO, content marketing, blogging, and so on).

Next, find and follow trending topics related to your writing niche as well as the type of content you create (articles, content marketing, email copy, web copy, etc.).

When your profile is all set up and ready to go, start searching for questions relevant to your writing niche. “Relevant questions” include questions that are of interest to potential clients and/or their audience.

You can find relevant questions either by clicking on a Topic and scanning for them, or by typing relevant keywords into the search bar.

When you come across a relevant question, bookmark it in the “Answer Later” section for easy access.

Finally, write phenomenal answers to your saved questions.

Your answers should be helpful. They should answer all parts of the question in the best way possible. And you should include links to additional resources if and when necessary.

Your answers should tell stories. Stories are not only a great way to engage readers and increase views, they also help readers learn and retain information better.

Your answers should incorporate visuals. Visuals break up your text and make your answers more visually appealing and easier to read.

Be sure to link to your writing samples when possible. In fact, whenever you publish a new article, you should spend some time finding and answering Quora questions related to it as a way to drive traffic.

Regularly answer questions to build your Quora audience and views. You’ll increase your position as an authority in your niche, increase your value to clients by building an audience, and potentially get freelance work from employers who come across your answers.

14. Offer Referral Deals

If they like your work, most clients will happily refer you to others.

But some clients may be reticent to refer you to others because they want to keep you to themselves.

Other clients simply require a bit of motivation.

A simple way to provide this motivation is to sweeten the pot with a referral deal.

Tell clients that for every referral they send your way that turns into a job, you’ll create one free piece of content for them.

Even though you’ll waste some work hours on free work, you’ll more than make up for it with the steady stream of new clients you get.

Short. Sweet. And simple.

Just remember:

It’s important you honor your word.

If a client finds out they referred you to someone, you got the job, and you reneged on your end of the deal, your relationship with the client will end and your reputation as a writer will be tarnished.

15. Monitor Companies That are Hiring for Content Marketing Roles

When you see an ad for a content marketing role, a “job opportunity flag” should be raised in your head.

A new content marketing hire is a sign a company is either investing more in content marketing or changing its content marketing strategy.

It can also simply mean they’re filling a vacant position.

Either way, a new hire still signifies a change in strategy. And it’s likely they’ll need more content and more help creating that content.

Rather than waiting for the company to post an ad for freelance writers (like those other lazy freelancers), take the initiative and demonstrate value upfront.

Reach out to the company (or even their new hire) and offer your help executing their new strategy.

First, use LinkedIn to monitor job ads seeking content producers and marketers.

With LinkedIn, you can use filters to narrow your search by job role, job type, and industry.

You’ll want to filter out any companies that aren’t in your writing niche using the “Industry” filter. If you write for software companies, limit your search to software companies.

It’s also best to limit your search to top-level content marketing roles. Top-level hires are the best indication a company is investing in a new content marketing strategy and increasing content production.

To filter for top-level roles, use keywords like “Content Marketing Strategist”, “Content Marketing Manager”, “Content Marketing Specialist”, “Head of Content Marketing”, etc. You can also use LinkedIn’s “Experience” and “Title” filters to narrow your search to top-level positions.

The best part about using LinkedIn for this strategy is you can set a job alert and have new job ads emailed to you. No need to waste time running new job searches over and over again in order to find job openings. Just set it and forget it.

Next, read the job ads to get a sense of the opportunity potential.

If the job ad indicates the company will be producing lots of new content, you know they’ll be a good source of potential work. Often the ad will say something like, “we’re looking to ramp up our content marketing efforts.”

Keep an eye out for any information on the new direction of their content strategy. If the ad says they’re looking to use written content to build authority in their niche, then make note of it. You’ll use it later in your pitch.

Once you’ve identified a few good prospects, it’s time to start crafting your pitch.

A great pitch should include:

1. An introduction that aligns you with their goals.

You might say something like, “I understand you’re looking to build authority with your blog and I think I can help.” This shows you’ve read their ad and understand what they want to achieve.

2. An article written on spec that you’ll let them publish for free.

This demonstrates your value and writing abilities upfront. It’s also a great way to start a positive relationship by giving them something of value for free.

3. A list of 5 to 10 article ideas you think they’ll like.

This demonstrates your ability to regularly produce great content ideas and will be a valuable asset to their new strategy.

Finally, send them your pitch.

It’s best to send your idea to the newbie hire once they’ve filled the role — the new hire will be most receptive because they’re new to the company, eager to make a good impression, and stand to benefit most from bringing a talented freelancer on board.

While this tactic takes a bit of effort, the potential for steady, long-term work makes it worthwhile.

16. Use an Ad Fishing Strategy

Ad Fishing is a technique that involves using Facebook or LinkedIn ads to target warm leads.

For simplicity, we’ll describe how to employ this strategy on Facebook, but the process for LinkedIn is identical.

To perform this strategy, you’ll need:

A Facebook Page;

Your own website/blog with the Facebook Pixel installed;

A case study describing how you helped a client achieve a certain result with your content marketing.

First, you’ll need a case study that demonstrates the value of your freelance writing.

Your case study should describe a positive result you helped a client achieve and the process you used for doing so. The positive result could be as simple as helping them boost monthly web traffic with a blog post.

Make sure your case study has a killer, benefit-oriented headline. For example:

“How I Got 10k New Monthly Visitors for a Client With One Blog Post”

The case study should also include a CTA (call to action) at the end inviting readers to contact you if they want similar results.

Next, create a “Bait Article” — an article your target clients will want to read.

For example, if you want to work with health care companies, you could create an article titled “7 Ways Health Care Companies Can Generate More Web Traffic”.

Promote the article wherever your target clients hang out. Post it in relevant Facebook Groups. Link to it in answers to relevant Quora questions. Or, simply promote it to your targets using Facebook Ads.

Finally, create a Retargeting Ad sharing your case study with anyone who reads the “Bait Article”.

The essence of this strategy is to use the “Bait Article” to find and qualify warm leads — people in your target market who want the results you can help them achieve.

Then you hook those warm leads with a case study that clearly demonstrates how you can help them achieve the desired result.

Because the ad only targets a small number of qualified leads, ad spend will be low and ROI (return on investment) will be high.

Chapter Three: 14 Writing Job Boards That are Packed with Writing Opportunities

Next up, let’s look at some popular (and some under-the-radar) job boards used by freelance writers all over the world.

If you’re new to freelancing, job boards will likely be your easiest entry point. You’ll be able to find writing jobs of all shapes and sizes.

Once you have some writing samples under your belt and you begin getting good referrals from clients, more opportunities will become available to you.

Let’s start with possibly the biggest one:

1. LinkedIn Jobs

If you’re a professional, there’s a good chance you already have a LinkedIn profile (even if, like me, you tend to forget about it for months at a time).

Its job board, as you would expect from a site that specializes in professional networking, is huge.

How huge?

Well, at the time of this writing, there are over 35,000 job postings for “copywriter” alone:

Thankfully, LinkedIn offers lots of filters. Search by date, the job’s industry, the job type (full-time jobs, part-time writing jobs, etc.), experience level, and more.

If you’re already on LinkedIn, it’s a good place to start.

2. Upwork

Depending on who you talk to, Upwork (formerly Elance-oDesk) is either awful or amazing. And the funny thing is, the reasons for its awfulness and amazingness are one and the same: low rates.

Employers love Upwork because you can typically find qualified applicants who live in areas with lower cost of living. As a result, they can get great work at reduced costs.

Those who hate Upwork do so because they’re competing with the aforementioned applicants who can comfortably live on less money.

So what does this mean for freelance writers?

Unless you’re content with low-paying rates (because you need the practice, you want to build up your portfolio, you need all the work you can get, etc.), you’re better off with one of the other job boards mentioned.

3. ProBlogger

As its name would suggest, the ProBlogger Job Board is a popular one among bloggers in search of freelance writing work and blogger jobs.

With a $70 starting price for posting a job, you tend to find smaller companies on ProBlogger. There are exceptions, of course.

One neat feature offered by ProBlogger is a Candidate Database employers can search to find writers. It’s free for writers to join, and you can use it as an online resume and sales page. Here’s an example from Smart Blogger student Mark Tong:

4. BloggingPro

BloggingPro requires clients to publish job ads that pay a minimum of $15 an hour (or have at least 500 words).

Job categories are blogging, content writing jobs, copywriting, and journalism. And types of work include contract, freelance, full-time, part-time, internship, and temporary.

As job boards not named LinkedIn or Indeed go, it’s pretty detailed.

5. FlexJobs

FlexJobs specializes in all types of online jobs and remote work, including remote jobs for writers. It isn’t free, but you get a lot for your money.

For starters, you’re safe from scams — each job posting is vetted by an actual human. You also don’t have to hunt for work from home jobs that’ll allow you to write in your pajamas — all online writing job ads (from blog posts to white papers to press releases to academic writing) are for remote positions. It’s kind of their thing.

Plans start at $14.95 per month. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, which means you can try it out, see if there are any promising writing jobs, and cancel if you don’t like what you see.

6. Freelance Writers Den

Founded by Carol Tice, the Freelance Writers Den is a paid membership site with a long track record.

Unlike most job boards, you also get bonuses. There are over 300 hours of training material, pitch examples, templates, and monthly live events.

Membership is $25 per month with no contract. You can cancel anytime and not pay the next month’s dues. There’s also a 7-day money-back guarantee when you first join.

7. Who Pays Writers?

According to its website, Who Pays Writers? is “an anonymous, crowd-sourced list of which publications pay freelance writers — and how much.”

Translation: Once you’re ready to write for a high-profile publication that’ll look amazing on your portfolio, Who Pays Writers? will be a helpful resource you can use to discover which publications accept applications (and how much they tend to pay per word).

It’s definitely one you should bookmark.

8. FreelanceWriting.com

Curating the best writing jobs that Indeed, Craigslist, BloggingPro, and others have to offer (as well as their own, exclusive writing opportunities); freelancewriting.com is a one-step resource for freelancers.

Not all job listings are for remote writing jobs, but you can filter the ads to fit your needs. Categories include blogging and marketing jobs (WordPress, SEO, content manager, content strategist for startups, etc.), writing (freelance copywriter, staff writer, short stories, article writer, non-fiction writer, creative writer, grant writer, medical writer, healthcare report writer, real estate writer, personal finance writer, creative content writer, script writer for podcasts, etc.), proofreading (writer/editor, copy editor, content editor, proofreader, etc.), journalism, non-profit gigs, copywriting jobs, social media (marketing manager, social media manager, etc.), and technical writing (technical writer, proposal writer, cover letters, service writer, resume writer, etc.).

If you’d like to keep your list of remote job boards short, freelancewriting.com is a good one to keep on it.

9. Freelance Writing Jobs

Freelance Writing Jobs curates blogging jobs from Craigslist, Indeed, Journalism Jobs, MediaBistro, and others.

Every week day, Monday through Friday, they publish a short list of hand-picked job ads. So, if you prefer quality content over quantity, it’s worth a bookmark.

10. Be a Freelance Blogger

Owned and operated by a Smart Blogger student, Sophie Lizard’s job board keeps things pretty simple: if you want to publish a job ad on Be a Freelance Blogger, it has to pay at least $0.10 per word or $50 per post.

If you’re just starting out, it’s definitely worth looking into.

11. Behance Creative Jobs

Though it’s primarily known for its portfolio features, Adobe’s Behance has a job board for creatives of all shapes and sizes.

Job listings for everything from advertising to public relations to freelance writing can be found, making it a solid resource for all kinds of freelancers.

12. Constant Content

Constant Content is a freelance writing platform that facilitates connections between brands and writers. You register for an account, complete a quiz, provide a short writing sample, and — once you’ve been accepted — start applying for writing jobs.

The brands they work with include Uber, Zulily, The Home Depot, Walgreens, Hayneedle, CVS, and eBay; and they claim their top writers earn up to $90,000 per year.

13. Journalism Jobs

If you want to target magazines and newspapers, Journalism Jobs is a great resource. With close to 3 million page views each month, it’s the largest resource for news writers and journalism jobs on the web.

So, if publications are your focus, it should be on your short list.

14. Copify

Copify is a different kind of freelance writing job board. First, you apply for membership. Once you’re in, you can take writing jobs when and if it suits you.

Its aim is to provide you “hassle-free” freelance writing opportunities. So, there are no contracts or commitments, and no need to submit bids or proposals. If you value simplicity, Copify could be a good fit.

Free Class: Want to make real, tangible money online as a freelance writer? Check out Smart Blogger’s Six-Figure Freelance Writing Class. You’ll get instant access to the first video when you sign up.

Chapter Four: Common Freelance Writing Questions (& Answers)

Still have questions? Don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal.

We’ll wrap things up with a quick FAQ.

Here are the common questions we receive from freelance writers. (If you have a question not discussed here, be sure to leave a comment below!)

You should also check out our Freelance Writing Hub. From elevating your writing skills to getting paid to write, it’s a go-to resource for everything you need to know about freelancing.

Now on to the Q&A…

What is freelance content writing?

Freelance writers are self-employed contractors who are hired by clients to create content for them. The type of content ranges from production descriptions to email copy to full-fledged eBooks — and everything in between.

What do you do as a freelance writer?

Well, hopefully, you write. A lot.

But you also:

Proofread and edit

Market and network

Hone your craft

Send invoices, do taxes, and other administrative tasks

Find paying gigs

And speaking of looking for work:

How do freelance writers find work?

How freelance writers land gigs tend to vary based on their experience writing. When you have a good body of work, you’ll get many of your blog writer jobs through referrals and repeat customers. As a result, if you’re an experienced writer, you typically make more money.

So, when you first start writing, you’ll need to be proactive. The job boards we discussed earlier will likely be where you have the most success initially. And don’t forget about the outside-the-box, under-the-radar strategies we discussed. You can find success with those too.

How much do freelance writers make?

When you’re just starting out, you’ll likely be in the $0.10 to $0.15 per word range. But, as you grow, you can command $500, $1,000, and more per article.

Once you have a body of work and you can prove you get results for clients, your pay increases.

How do freelance writers get paid?

Every client will have their own methods for paying writers, but typically you’ll submit an invoice via a service like PayPal, Stripe, or TransferWise.

Make sure you understand the payment terms before you begin work. If you’re unsure, ask the client.

How much do you charge for a 500 word article? How much should I charge for a 1000 word article?

Using the $0.10 to $0.15 per word range we just discussed, as a new freelance writer you can expect to earn between $50 and $75 for a 500-word article.

For a 1,000-word article, a new freelancer could expect to earn between $100 and $150.

But again, as time goes on, your rate should be higher.

How much does a freelance writer make per hour?

It depends.

Most clients will pay freelance writers by word count or individual project. For such clients, your hourly rate will depend on how fast you work.

But there is some data available to give you a broad (probably too broad) idea:

According to PayScale, the hourly range for freelance writers is $11.50 to $63.02. On average, the hourly rate is $24.07.

ZipRecruiter’s numbers are even broader. It says the hourly range is between $5.29 and $76.68 for freelance writers, with $30 being the national average in the United States.

Takes these numbers with a grain of salt, though.

How do you start freelance writing? How do I become a freelance writer with no experience?

Freelance writing experience or no, if you’re willing to accept lower-than-ideal pay rates on job boards, blog content mills, or freelance marketplaces (think Fiverr and Textbroker), you can get started right away. Find freelance job postings, apply to them, and get to work.

But big picture, the answer depends on which group do you belong to:

I’m a skilled writer, but I don’t yet have a body of work. Or,

my writing leaves a lot to be desired.

If you’re in the former group, focus on building a good writing portfolio. If you have your own website, publish articles on there. Medium is a good option too (and it’s free).

If you’re the latter, you really should focus on improving your writing skills. You can probably find work as you are, sure, but a portfolio filled with crappy articles won’t help you find good clients.

Our writing articles here at Smart Blogger can help you. So can the excellent writing content at Enchanting Marketing, Copyblogger, and others. And if you need formal training, the free class I mentioned earlier is well worth your time.

Can you be a freelance writer without a Bachelor’s degree (or even High School Diploma)?

Absolutely. I have a Master’s in Computer Science that I paid way too much money to acquire. Know how many times I’ve been asked by a potential client if I had a degree? Zero. Know how many times the word “degree” popped up when Jon was interviewing me for Smart Blogger? Zilch.

If you can do the work, you can do the work. A degree in creative writing, or lack of one, won’t matter.

Are “guest posts” the same thing as freelance writing jobs?

Semantics aside, yes.

With a guest post, you’re writing content for a website you don’t own, you’re credited as the author, and you get an author byline (or, at least you do with good guest post opportunities). With a freelance writing job, you’re writing content for a website you don’t own, you’re credited as the author (unless it’s a ghostwriter assignment), and you get an author byline (unless, again, you’re ghostwriting).

The only difference is compensation.

All freelance writing jobs will pay you money. With guest blogging, some blogs and websites pay writers to write guest posts for them; with others, you don’t receive monetary compensation, but you get perks like having your work seen by new audiences and beefing up your writing portfolio.

Do guest bloggers get paid?

Some do. As mentioned above, some websites pay writers to write guest posts for them.

To find out if a guest blogging opportunity is a paying one, you need to check their website. Look for a page named “editorial guidelines”, “guest posting guidelines”, “write for us”, or something similar.

Then (and this is important) you need to thoroughly read said guidelines.

If it’s a paying freelance writing gig, or even if it’s just an unpaid freelance writing opportunity for a popular website, you want to get your relationship with the target website off to a good start. And nothing will get your relationship off to a bad start quite like failing to read their guidelines.

Many websites, especially large ones that receive lots of inquiries, will use their editorial guidelines to eliminate sub-par candidates.

For example, here are a few of the guidelines Smart Blogger used to have in our since-retired “Write for Us” page:

On average, writing a post for us takes 10-20 hours from start to finish. re: the chances we'll accept your post

During our rigorous editing process your post may go through five or six drafts before we feel it is ready to publish.

If you prefer to deliver one draft and have it published pretty much as-is, this is not the blog for you. If you prefer not to have your ideas tested or your writing scrutinized, then again, this is not the blog for you. re: the grueling blog writing process

We like longer posts in the 2,000 – 3,000 word range. Don’t think of a 1,500 word post padded out. Think of a 5,000 post trimmed down to its essence. re: guest posting length guidelines

And, trust me, there was a lot more where that came from. Each paragraph, each sentence, was carefully designed to filter potential candidates.

Most blogs and websites won’t have such detailed guidelines. But they will have some guidelines (and if one doesn’t, it isn’t one you want to do business with).

Read the guidelines, follow them, and you’ll do fine.

What are the highest paying freelance writing jobs? What niche should I pursue if I want to make lots of money as a writer?

The list of profitable writing niches can change for a variety of reasons (just look at what the coronavirus did to the “travel” industry in 2020), but here’s an evergreen tip for finding high-paying gigs:

Follow the money.

If you see lots of job ads for freelance writing jobs in a particular niche, chances are the niche is profitable.

True, smart, and sophisticated businesses will continue to hire freelance writers and produce content during a recession (it pays off for them long-term), but unsophisticated clients will stop — unless they’re still making money.

This is a simple but effective hack for finding profitable niches.

To learn more, check out 17 Freelance Writing Niches That Still Pay Big Bucks.

Is freelance writing legit?

I’ll resist the urge to make an M.C. Hammer joke. Instead, I’ll simply say:

Yes, freelance writing is legit.

(You could almost say it’s too legit.)

Ready to Become a Successful Freelance Writer?

There may be lots of online writing jobs out there, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy out there.

Landing paid writing jobs is difficult. Getting started with a freelance career is difficult. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t doable. It’s very doable.

With the tips and resources in this post, you’re now armed with knowledge. You know what steps you need to take in order to be prepared, you know under-the-radar places to look for opportunities, and you have a sizable list of freelance writing job boards from which to choose.

All that’s left is for you to take action.

Are you ready to get started? Ready to take a huge step towards quitting your day job and following your dream? Ready to find that first (or hundredth) paying assignment?

Then let’s do this thing.

The post 36 Underrated Ways to Find PAID Freelance Writing Jobs in 2021 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/freelance-writing-jobs/

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williamlwolf89 · 5 years ago

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35 Ways to Find Freelance Writing Jobs (Even in a Pandemic)

Are you afraid it’s impossible to find freelance writing jobs due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic?

It’s certainly more difficult out there in certain niches, but here’s the reality:

Whether you’re a seasoned freelance writer or a new writer with no experience, online writing jobs that pay are still plentiful in 2020 — if:

You know where to look…

You know how to promote yourself…

And you know how to differentiate yourself from your fellow freelance writers.

That’s where we come in.

If you’re a freelance writer who wants to earn a full-time or part-time income doing what you love, this definitive, A-to-Z resource will help you do just that.

Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: 5 Steps to Help You Prepare

Chapter 2: 16 Under-the-Radar Writing Opportunities

Chapter 3: 14 Job Boards for Writers

Chapter 4: Freelancing Q&A

Get Your House in Order: 5 Steps to Help You Prepare (& Land More Freelance Writing Gigs)

The philosopher Seneca (allegedly) said, “luck is what happens when practice meets opportunity.”

The book of Galatians in the Bible tells us we reap what we sow.

Stephen King put it this way:

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

The common theme? Success tends to find those who are prepared for it.

As a writer, here are four things you should do to prepare for freelancing glory:

1. Create a Writing Portfolio That Kicks Butt

“Do you have writing samples?” “Can I see some of your writing work?” “What are some high-quality articles you’ve written?”

As a freelance writer, you’ll hear questions like these often.

And your answer?

Here’s a link to my writing portfolio.

At least, that should be your answer. But unfortunately, many freelancers skip the whole “prove you actually know how to write” thing.

As Scott Weiland once sang, “let the proof be in the pudding, sugar.”

Don’t simply tell prospective clients that you’re an amazing freelance content writer. And don’t assume they already know you’re the cat’s meow and the bee’s knees.

Show them.

2. Supercharge Your Writing Skills

Unless you want to spend your freelance writing career slumming through online content mills with entry-level job ads that pay peanuts, you need to level up your content creation skills.

Because those high-paying freelance writer jobs you lay awake dreaming about? Companies don’t hand them to just anyone.

They give them to the best writers — content creators who:

Realize the importance of SEO (and can create SEO content with both readers and Google in mind);

Understand the importance of proofreading and submitting error-free work;

Write fast, meet deadlines for their writing projects, and are seemingly immune to writer’s block;

Craft amazing headlines, write with clarity, and support their points with examples;

Have top-notch communication skills;

Can connect with readers on an emotional level.

The good news?

With hard work, anyone can improve their writing skills. And for the few who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do it, the payoff can be huge.

This site is filled with helpful how-to articles on copywriting, content writing, writing contests, content marketing, article writing, and SEO. And if you need training, we have that too.

Further Reading: How to Become a Better Writer: 14 Tips to Up Your Writing Game in 2020 shares our favorite must-have skills for writers. Read it, bookmark it, and come back to it again and again.

3. Ask for Testimonials

Have you already landed a writing job or two? Awesome.

Did you ask the client to give you a testimonial? A few words declaring their undying love and/or satisfaction with your work (that you can use to help you land more writing clients)?

No? Well, you’re not alone.

So how should you ask for one? Keep it simple.

Here’s how Karen MacKenzie asked for a testimonial after we published her first post on Smart Blogger:

“Would it be possible to get a testimonial for my website? I know you are really busy, but I’d really appreciate it.”

And because Karen did such a good job on her post, I was happy to give her the following testimonial:

Want a great testimonial like Karen’s?

Create testimonial-worthy content for your clients and then — this is key — ask them for a freakin’ testimonial.

4. Learn How to Craft a Killer Author Bio

Picture it:

A wealthy business owner sitting in a Herman Miller chair on top of a rug made out of recycled Herman Miller chairs is reading an article you’ve written.

She’s impressed. She calls to her butler, Jeeves, and asks him to bring one of her suitcases filled with money.

Your article is so good, she wants to hire you.

But then she gets to your byline — the one you threw together at the last minute. The one that lists your hobbies and has no clear call to action.

“Throw the suitcase in the fire, Jeeves,” she says. “I shan’t be hiring a writer today.”

If you don’t want this totally realistic scenario to happen to you, you need to get really good at writing author bios.

Why?

Because someone who’s made it to your author bio is primed. They’ve read your work and want to learn about the attractive, intelligent individual who wrote it.

Maybe they want to check out your website content. Maybe they want to find you on social media so they can follow you.

Or maybe they want your contact info so they can hire you.

A byline should shout to the world your expertise. It should say to prospective clients, “if you thought this article was great, you should hire me and see what I can do for you.”

Taking the time to craft a great one is time well spent.

5. Know How to Write a Pitch

Few people enjoy cold pitching to prospective clients.

But you know what?

The writers who are willing to do it have an edge. And the ones who are good at it — and I mean really freakin’ good at it — are never more than an email or two away from snagging a new writing job.

So how do you get really freakin’ good at cold pitches? For starters, don’t make these rookie mistakes:

Don’t write long emails. Editors and clients are busy. Respect their time.

Don’t send the exact same pitch to different people. Every editor and every client has unique needs, audiences, and styles.

Don’t ignore their guidelines. Want a sure-fire way to have your email deleted? Pitch to a website that has clearly stated submission guidelines, but ignore said guidelines.

But just as importantly, do these things:

Research. Do your homework.

Find the name of the person you’re pitching to. Address the person by name in your email.

Get to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. Tell them what you want and why.

Sell them on you. Popular websites receive pitches all the time. Why should they hire you? Explain it to them.

These pointers and more (as well as email templates) can be found in our post, How to Write a Pitch That’ll Wow Editors & Clients.

Read it, bookmark it, and reference it often.

Pound the Pavement: 16 Hacks for Finding Under-the-Radar Writing Opportunities

Anyone can find a job board and search for online writing jobs.

But that’s both a good and bad thing — anyone can do it.

That awesome writing job you found online? The one you’d be perfect for? Fifty other “perfect” people found it too.

We’ll go over some great job board options in a moment (because they do have lots to offer new freelance writers), but first we’ll take a trip down the road less traveled.

For example, did you know you could…

1. Use Twitter to Reverse-Engineer Online Writing Jobs

Want an outside-the-box way to find writing job opportunities?

Try Twitter’s advanced search engine.

In the example below, I searched for tweets that included the phrase “writer wanted”:

Click “Search” and you’ll see a list of tweets with various job postings for writers:

Scroll through the list and tweak your job search, as needed.

Some of the results will be scams, but most will be legitimate. Many will be for remote writing jobs, but some will be location specific (usually New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Washington D.C., Dallas, Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Portland, and other major cities in the United States). Just skip over the ones that don’t apply to you.

If you look at “Top” tweets, as shown in the screenshot above, you’ll find brand-new jobs mixed with older ones. Click “Latest” if you want to see recent tweets first.

Tip: When you find a tweet for a job that shows promise, click Twitter’s like/heart icon. That way you’ll be able to easily find your shortlisted tweets later.

The nice thing about Twitter’s advanced search feature is it’s only limited by your imagination.

That’ll give you a list of websites that accept guest posts, which you can later whittle down (after you’ve done a little more research) into a list of sites that pay guest writers.

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

2. Follow Leads on Social Media

When you use Twitter’s advanced search feature to find freelance writing jobs online, you’ll discover certain Twitter handles pop up fairly frequently.

One example is @write_jobs:

When you find a good lead, follow them. That way you can cut through the noise of Twitter and go straight to your best sources.

Even better?

Add them to a private Twitter list so that tweets from all your leads can be found in one handy repository.

Here’s how you do it:

Here are a few more handles to get your Twitter list started:

@FreelanceWJ

@WhoPaysWriters

@jjobs_tweets

3. Check Out Agency Job Postings

Everyone likes to talk about job boards (which, again, we’ll discuss in a moment). But you know what resource most freelance writers ignore?

Agencies.

Per Jon:

One of the best potential clients is agencies, because they usually have an ongoing need for writers. Instead of only getting paid once, you can develop a relationship with a few and get new freelance blogging gigs for months or even years into the future. How to Become a Freelance Writer, Starting from Scratch

So how can you get work from agencies? Well, you could contact them directly and ask if they have any freelance work (Jon calls this a “gutsy but effective approach”).

The other way is to keep checking their “career” page:

The Content Marketing Institute maintains a detailed database of agencies. Click here to check it out.

4. Find (and Woo) Clients on Their Turf

Most articles that tout social media as a good place to find leads will point you to Facebook Groups.

And it makes sense. After all, search Facebook for “writing jobs”, click the “Groups” tab, and you’ll see dozens and dozens of options that are open to the public:

If you’re looking for a safe space where like minded individuals offer tips, advice, and writing inspiration; such groups are great.

But if you’re looking to find paying gigs, you’ll likely be left wanting.

That’s not to say Facebook Groups can’t lead to online writing jobs that pay. The trick is you need to find groups where the buyers, not the sellers, hang out.

Think “masterminds”, “think tanks”, etc.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Such groups are usually private. So, what’s a writer to do?

Skip the Facebook Groups. Go Straight to the Sources.

One of the amazing things about technology is the way it allows us to connect and interact with people with whom we’d otherwise never have the opportunity.

Want to write for a mover and shaker in your industry? Want to befriend an influencer who can open doors for you (the kind of doors that lead to paying jobs)?

Make a connection. Be generous. Give without asking or expecting anything in return.

That means following them on Twitter, sharing their content, and interacting with them. It means subscribing to their email list.

And, yes, it may mean buying one of their products. Because here’s the thing:

And that includes pointing leads in your direction.

5. Pitch to Software Company Blogs

More from Jon:

You want to work with businesses who have money to spend on marketing. Chances are, those companies are subscribed to various apps for email marketing, analytics, and so on. Most software companies in the marketing space (like HubSpot, Sumo, PayPal, Ahrefs, etc.) also publish a great deal of content. So, who better to write for? You’re instantly getting in front of thousands of the right clients. Many of these blogs will also pay you to write for them, so in many cases you can get your first client while also prospecting for clients.

As with agencies, you can either cold pitch the software companies (which sometimes works), or you can keep an eye out for open freelance positions:

6. Don’t Be Scared of Ghostwriting

A lot of writers don’t like the idea of ghostwriting.

I get it. You’re letting someone else put their name on and take credit for your hard work.

Yes, that’s ghostwriting in a nutshell (minus the theatrics). But here’s the thing:

Ghostwriting pays better than regular freelance writing. When you ghostwrite, it’s not unheard of to increase your fee by 15%-20% (or more).

The opportunities in ghostwriting are virtually endless. You could ghostwrite blog posts, articles, scripts used on YouTube channels, or even books sold on Amazon.

You can make great freelance writing business relationships by ghostwriting. People who pay for ghostwriters tend to have money (and connections). Oftentimes, these clients can refer you to others.

If your primary goal is to build up a strong list of writing samples, ghostwriting isn’t for you.

But if your goal is to make money writing and build potentially-profitable business relationships, it’s something to consider.