{"id":22668,"date":"2013-01-31T14:54:06","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T13:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=22668"},"modified":"2013-01-31T14:54:06","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T14:54:06","slug":"journalist-spotlight-andy-jarosz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/journalist-spotlight-andy-jarosz\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Spotlight: Andy Jarosz"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"InterviewAndy Jarosz is a freelance travel writer who talks to Cision about taking days off, poking a volcano and looking like Nicolas Cage.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Andy’s appears on BBC Travel, MSN Travel<\/a> and National Geographic Traveller<\/a>. Previously an optometrist, Andy decided to go freelance nearly four years ago to become his own boss.<\/p>\n

Describe your current role<\/span>
<\/b>As a freelance writer my work is probably 60% travel and the rest is copywriting. For the main outlets I write for, it\u2019s a mix of pitching ideas from places that I\u2019ve been or I\u2019m planning to go to and getting commissioned work where the editor says, \u2018Can you write this article by Friday?\u2019 or in some cases, \u2018by this afternoon\u2019. My pitch success rate is probably more than 50%. At the start it was very low; so much of it is down to the editors knowing who you are and now I am mainly pitching to people I\u2019ve worked with before.<\/p>\n

How did your blog 501 Places<\/a> start?<\/span>
<\/b>When I started as a freelancer I had no particular intention to write a blog but after writing pitches day after day I thought I needed some writing discipline. It grew from the intention of writing 500 words everyday on something, which I can read, edit and get out there. Having the blog noticed by various people was a useful tool for pitching; it got me noticed by the BBC so that in itself is a successful outcome.<\/p>\n

How often do you travel?<\/span>
<\/b>As a travel freelance I\u2019m away 13 to 15 weeks a year. My wife and I have just come back from a seven-week trip and that\u2019s the big trip of the year. There\u2019ll probably be a two-week trip somewhere and a whole series of short breaks.<\/p>\n

How did the long trip relate to your freelancing?<\/span>
<\/b>We wanted to take a long trip in the winter so we bought a round-the-world ticket visiting the destinations of our choice. I then pitched a series of ideas to various sites \u2013 BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveller and roundtheworldflights.com<\/a>, which is the company I bought the tickets from. By the time we left I had 27 commissioned pieces, 21 of which I wrote while we were travelling and the rest I\u2019ve finished since I got home. I was writing a lot as we were going but that helped to fund the trip to a large extent. My task now is to sell some of the ideas and experiences I\u2019ve had to editors as unusual stories that will hopefully be of interest.<\/p>\n

We did things that we maybe wouldn\u2019t have normally done \u2013 spent money on a particular activity, attraction or museum \u2013 and made an effort to talk to more local people as that\u2019s where the most interesting stories often come from. I deliberately planned an itinerary and a route that would take us to places that other people haven\u2019t been to so I would get an unusual angle.<\/p>\n

How does being a freelancer fit in with your life?<\/span>
<\/b>I would say my work\/life balance in this job has been better than in any other job I\u2019ve had. There are times when I\u2019m obviously very busy and I don\u2019t stick to regular hours, so I may work on a Sunday or in the evenings, but as long as I don\u2019t have a pressing deadline I have the flexibility to take a day off when I want. There are obviously downsides to it as well, times when I\u2019d be happy to take time off but I am too busy or a time when it\u2019s raining and I\u2019ve nothing to do and the work is not there.<\/p>\n

Do you ever turn work down?<\/span>
<\/b>Turning work down is difficult, sometimes you sit there and think, \u2018I can\u2019t take any more work this month\u2019, and then someone offers you something and you say \u2018Yes, of course, I\u2019ll get that done\u2019. I can always find another two hours in the day because I\u2019m not at a point where I know there\u2019s more work coming. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever get to that point because there\u2019s always that fear that there\u2019ll be a quiet period around the corner.<\/p>\n

How do you use social media?<\/span>
<\/b>I use social media without any real plan. I was reading something this morning about how to get more retweets and found the whole thing depressing. Once you start manufacturing your tweets everything becomes false and phoney. I\u2019ll tweet when I want to and it\u2019s rarely pushing out my travel stuff. I\u2019m also fiercely independent about it so I won\u2019t use my tweets to promote anybody\u2019s products or competitions.<\/p>\n

I tried Pinterest but didn\u2019t have the time or see the point of it. I have a Google+ account which I don\u2019t use but as it is Google I don\u2019t really want to ignore it. I also created a 501 Places Facebook page but I don\u2019t really know why it\u2019s there. Twitter is overwhelmingly my main social media outlet.<\/p>\n

How do you work with PRs?<\/span>
<\/b>There is no commercial activity on my blog, I decided that by default and it\u2019s been quite useful to have a clear line on it. I work with PRs on a lot of my commissioned work; I\u2019m going to Scotland next week for a commissioned piece and the PR from Visit Scotland has been absolutely fantastic in organising the trip.<\/p>\n

Another example is from the round the world trip \u2013 I had a BBC commission in Macau and because I know the PRs at Hume Whitehead, who represent Macau, I dropped Sarah a line and when she found out it was a BBC commission she immediately took care of all my arrangements. PRs are very good in terms of sources of information and getting things organised for commissioned trips.<\/p>\n

My biggest frustration with PRs is getting unsolicited emails with large attachments. There is nothing worse than getting an email about some hotel I don\u2019t care about with a 5MB attachment when I\u2019m travelling with a mobile device. It takes 20 minutes to download and I think, \u2018oh bloody hell, what have you done that for\u2019. There\u2019s no excuse for anyone to send unsolicited emails with attachments of any size \u2013 that\u2019s my biggest bugbear.<\/p>\n

From a journalist point of view, my involvement with PRs has been more reactive than proactive but it\u2019s helpful to know who represents who.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Take Five<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best experience you\u2019ve ever had when travelling?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
Standing on an active volcano in Hawaii and poking the red hot lava with a stick. It was very cool. Well it was very hot, but cool.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is there anywhere you haven\u2019t been you\u2019d like to go?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
Loads of places. The first place I\u2019d say is Brazil \u2013 it\u2019s a country with so much going on and I\u2019d love to go to the Amazon Jungle, see the Iguazu Falls and experience the buzz of Rio.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have any surprising hobbies or interest?<\/b><\/span>
I like being a tourist in London. I try to go into London at least once a week with my wife and play the dumb tourist, taking photos of people and places and enjoying the city as a visitor.<\/span><\/p>\n

What would your super power be?<\/b><\/span>
To fly very quickly between places or teleport myself. For all the travelling I do, I hate flying.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who would play you in a film?<\/b><\/span>
People have generously told me I look like Nicolas Cage so I\u2019d probably have to go with that, but I wouldn\u2019t envy him the role.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Editorial information on Andy Jarosz, the BBC, MSN, National Geographic Traveller as well as thousands of other media contacts and outlets, can be found in the CisionPoint<\/a> media database<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Jarosz is a freelance travel writer who talks to Cision about taking days off, poking a volcano and looking like Nicolas Cage.\u00a0 Andy’s appears on BBC Travel, MSN Travel and National Geographic Traveller. Previously …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":22807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,7272,3532,5741],"tags":[4173,4174,4175,293,1845,3326,7300,4172],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}