Faces of Freelance with Vedika Bahl
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And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
John 1:16
So, it’s been a minute and it’s been real inconsistent but welcome back to the blog, now hosted on my brand new website! 🎉
I have decided to dial back on the blogging and podcasting to once a month because EYE CAN’T KEEP UP. In the next post that I’ve programmed in my head (will it manifest irl though? idk), I’m gonna tell you about why I haven’t been able to keep up with my bimonthly blog/podcast update commitment and the grace I’ve had to extend myself in this period. I think I’ll also tackle my challenges with branding, mostly cause I struggle to stick to one aesthetic and my cover images and promo material just ALWAYS LOOK DIFFERENT (until now cause I’ve actually had to put my foot down!) and also will talk about this brand new website which I 100% hated creating but it was defo worth it.
I should disclaim though that no one should hold me to even monthly updates because because on months that allow for more time and patience I might bless you with even 2 posts and on months that do not allow even for enough sleep, well, I will be sleeping. In conclusion, just stay tuned and when a post comes out, it comes out. 🤷🏾♀️
That being said, let’s get on with today’s post, shall we?
🚨It’s another “Faces of Freelance”! 🚨
In this one, I catch up with Vedika Bahl, whom I met during my undergrad days at events hosted by the uni’s spoken word society.
Vedika is a British-Indian broadcast journalist and news producer, currently at France24 in Paris. She has previously worked at the Telegraph, ABC News, and Clover Films. Her documentary “Defeated: the Boxers Who Survive by Losing” won Best Documentary at the Broadcast Journalism Training Council awards in 2018.
She recently started a new position where she writes, edits, and voices the news packages that play on air and the video above is one example - that’s Vedika presenting! If you’d like to see more, drop a comment below and I’ll make sure to get some more links for you.
The only reference I had to news production was that show “The Newsroom” - one of my favorite shows - but I would not have been able to tell you if what I was seeing on there was accurate or not, and still, I couldn’t really tell you what a producer actually did. So I thought it would be a great next FoF episode to have a news producer on. And on that, here’s Vedika!
This interview, carried out on the 12th of April 2021, has been clipped for brevity. Click here for the full interview transcript.
In conversation with Vedika
Thank you so much for joining me. We're going to start as we usually do with you introducing yourself: what’s your name, what do you do, where you are right now, and what you're currently working on?
So, my name is Vedika Bahl, I am a broadcast journalist and news producer in Paris. I currently work at France24 as a freelancer. I work in rolling news with production and broadcast and all sorts of things within the company to be honest.
So, what is production and broadcast what is your role then?
So, my role consists of making sure all the elements for the news bulletin are ready to go and prepared. I'm kind of like an image producer, I manage everything visual about the bulletin. We work in teams of three, at least in my in my organisation. There’s the presenter, the anchor, who is on air and then you have the senior producer who is in charge, they choose the running order and what stories go in which place and also liaise with new editors to decide which stories are going to do in the day. That's kind of a team effort as well, we can all have input, but it's mainly the two of them that will have that discussion.
My job is to take that empty skeleton of what we have decided to do for the day and make it so that when it goes on TV it has everything that it needs. I will identify the images that we need, source them from wherever we're getting them from: the news wires, file footage, archive, whatever, cut them put them in place, sound bites, send the news reports - I work closely with the desk to send their reports to make sure that we have those in the bulletin. I also create all the elements are there for the live, so when we go live to a correspondent, I have to put all of those elements in the news bulletin as well. A bulletin is like a skeleton and basically my job is to kind of like fill in all the muscles and the ligaments, I guess.
I do a few other things too; I recently started as a desk journalist making news packages that we play on air. I dabbled in the social media department too, working on digital journalism and our social media output. And quite often I also am a business producer, I work with the with the business presenters on both channels, so at France24 we have an English-language channel, a French-language channel, and an Arabic channel, and my job as their business producer is to work in two skeletons at the same time, two run downs at the same time, and I basically make the business bulletin for both channels, working closely with the French presenter, the French business presenter, and the French English presenter. So, there's a few eggs in my basket.
Yeah, I understand your schedule now, with all this on your plate!
That’s the thing, when you work in a – every news organisation has different ways of doing it, but I work for a rolling news channel, so it's 24-hours a day. In order to run for 24 hours, you need people to be there 24 hours.
I do have I do have kind of rough hours sometimes. I start at 4:00 in the morning when I do business. This week I was on nights. 4:00 in the morning hurts, it really hurts because you wake up at 3:00 – well, I wake up at three, some people can wake up at 3:30 and roll out of bed, I need a cup of tea in the morning and I need to take a minute to sort myself out before I leave the house, so I wake up at 3:00, but I think I'm in the minority. This week I've been on nights, so you start at 11 p.m. and finish at 6 a.m., and then just last night I got in at 2:00. I was on a 6:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. shift. It does vary and the weeks can be pretty rough.
I imagine it keeps you on your toes…
It keeps you on your toes, but you know I do I do tell people when they’re like “how do you do it? I don't know how you do it,” and I'm like, well you know, I have those moments too when I’m like “what am I doing? I just I can't,” like, it's 4:00 p.m. and I've just woken up, or it's 3:00 in the morning and I'm going to work. I have those days too, but you know there are other days where I'm so thankful to be a freelancer because – maybe not now during a pandemic, but you know back in normal society it had its perks. Me and my friends could go see a movie at like 11:00 a.m. on a Wednesday if we wanted to. We can go to lunch midweek when there's nobody there; the city is kind of yours on a weekday afternoon if you have it off. It’s nice. It has its perks. You have time off. You also get to manage your own schedule and I like that. I like having autonomy over my schedule: which days I don't want to work, if I want to book off two months, if I want to take a week here, a week there I can. I'm not bound by holiday limits. But yeah, freelancing is tough. It’s definitely not for everybody and it's definitely a tough place to find your footing.
I was kind of wondering thanks between freelancing and being like a permanent staff member at France24. What does that actually mean practically? Are you a perma-lancer? As in, will they often go back to you or do you have to apply again? I don’t really know how it works for broadcast.
I think it works differently based on where you're based, and on the labour laws, I assume. I'm from the UK and I think in the UK it might be slightly different. But here, for example, the labour laws are such that if you are a freelancer there's not really any kind of permanent liaison between you. You can work as long as you want, and they can give you as many shifts as they want.
Here, in my understanding, if you're a permanent member of staff you have to apply for a job and then you have a contract. The people that I know in my organisation have a cycle, so they know exactly which days they are working for like the next year. With that they also have the added benefit of employee benefits, paid vacations, and things like that. So, they do have that their perks too but at the same time they are bound to a cycle, whereas freelancers are not. The biggest difference between them is that a permanent member of staff will have a fixed salary whereas as a freelance journalist I earn as much as I work. So, the months that I do less shifts, or if I go away, or take some time off that will have a direct effect on my money for that month. I think that's the biggest difference between them.
So, the flexibility is what attracted you to doing freelance?
I kind of stumbled into freelance if I'm honest. When I left journalism school, I applied a few places, but the industry is cut-throat. It’s very tough, I was lucky to get an interview with France24. They actually came to my journalism school, and all kind of headhunting, I guess, in a way. I applied and it turned out to be a freelance role. At first, I was really overwhelmed by that, I think we're kind of not taught as we're growing up to look for jobs like that. I think we’re kind of conditioned to look for permanent, 9 to 5 kind of things. So, it was a bit of a shock in the beginning, but in the end, I decided to take the job and move to Paris.
It was overwhelming in the beginning, at one point I was like “oh, well I'll have loads and loads of shifts,” and I do, I do have regular shifts, but it was a bit of a surprise because there are times when you don't get as many shifts as you would think. Obviously, you do have months where things don't go to plan and you do have fewer shifts than normal or something happens and you have to go away for a couple of weeks, or you need to take a break, and things like that, and those things do have an effect on the salary. But at the end of the day, I'm pretty content. I do like being a freelancer I like the fact that it gives me the opportunity to if I want – right now I only work at one place, but if I wanted to work at several places at once I have the option to do that. But yeah, it's definitely not everybody.
But you freelance as well, right? You do a few different things.
Yeah… but it's not like broadcasting and so it doesn't seem as hectic. But also, I don't think that freelancing is for me. It's okay for now and it helps that I live at home and that I don't have to like to sustain myself independently – and I am getting more and more gigs that pay better and stuff like that, but I think ultimately, I would wear myself out.
I'm learning a lot of things about myself like I work all the time – I didn't know this about myself just because, like, when I had scheduled hours, I would work those hours and then that's fine, but because I don't, I feel like I'm working all the time just to be able to do more and get more.
I think as a print journalist, which I would say that you are, freelancing is very different because you're essentially your own publicist. You have to kind of brand yourself and reach out and that can be very taxing. So, I totally understand – you’re constantly looking for the next thing and reaching out to places and trying to squeeze yourself into all these boxes which, I assume, is very overwhelming. I think print is definitely a different ball game. I know that there's not a lot of like branding associated in print, you kind of have to make your own brand and then the goal is that places reach out to you.
I was wondering about your move to France and being there. How's that been? Are you enjoying it, and do you miss England? Tell me a little bit about moving there.
Honestly, this is a very interesting time to be asking this question. Because of COVID I haven't been home and seen my family in over a year. So, I definitely am missing home, I'm definitely home sick right now.
But otherwise, if we ignore the pandemic, London is just a stone’s throw away. I could go home and see my family and my friends; I stay in regular touch with my circle. But Paris is beautiful, I think I've had this discussion with friends here before that there is definitely like this notion about Paris where people put it on a pedestal. It’s like this romanticised city. It's a tough city, it's tough. It's very tough to adjust and it's tough to assimilate. There is a lot of bureaucracy that is awful, things that you never saw yourself doing especially with Brexit – that has been a whole other ball game. Even without Brexit, you never expect yourself to be drowning in paperwork, but here I was drowning in paperwork. All those things tax. It's different, it's difficult and it's not what you expect that you are going to be doing.
It is a beautiful city, the living costs I find are slightly lower than if I was in a big city in the UK, bar rent. My commute doesn't feel as taxing as my commute did when I was freelancing in London and studying in London, like it was definitely a lovely adjustment to pay 1/3 of what I paid for the month on and travel and things like that. There are definitely benefits in Paris when you finally hit that sweet spot of adjustment in the city, it is beautiful. There are so many things to do and see, there’s so much culture, there's so much life. But it takes time; anyone moving anywhere it takes time to adjust.
Also, cities like this, you know, Paris, London, New York those kinds of places can be very lonely. They are the cities in the world that people think are the fullest of life and full of joy and they can be, but you need a circle for them to be those places. They're not those places when you move there solo. When you move to big cities on your own it's never going to be the experience unless you’re very lucky and you go to a bar and you suddenly meet – you know like in a movie – unless you have that experience, I think it can be very lonely. You need to find your tribe; it took me awhile it's taken me a couple of years to figure out exactly how I was going to do this and to feel really comfortable with where I was living and who I was living with and in my in my neighbourhood and figure things out and find my people. But now that I have, I'm pretty content. It is a beautiful city, but there are always obstacles to navigate.
And would you like to work in more places internationally?
You know what, I think if you had asked me pre-COVID I would have said yes. But I think right now, based on how I feel, honestly, I just want to go home and be closer to my circle back home. But you never know what the future holds. For the right opportunity then maybe.
But I think this year has really taught me the significance of being closer to your family. At the moment I think I would like to stay close to home, but who knows what will happen in the future.
So, you wanted to be a journalist for a long time?
I think, subconsciously, I did. I don't remember a moment, ever, in my adolescence where I sat and thought “I'm going to be a journalist.” I don't remember ever feeling that, ever. But subconsciously I must have because I specifically remember when I was 17 or 18, I hadn't even done my A-levels, I hadn’t even got the place at University of Birmingham yet, but I already knew what their paper was called, I already knew that I wanted to be on it, I already watched all the promotional materials. So, subconsciously I must have wanted to be a journalist. And I signed up the first week; Freshers Week, I was the first one there. But yeah, I definitely learned a lot, like even though I don't work in print anymore and I definitely fell out of love with print pretty heavy after my second year.
Okay, how come?
I love print, it was part of my story I don't know why I just it became very taxing.
You know what it was? I loved writing for the paper I even had a few front pages in our student paper, it was called RedBrick, I had a few RedBrick front pages. I loved covering stories, I definitely felt like I brought new elements to it because I was different. I covered a lot of like Diwali events on campus and things that they hadn't necessarily done before, and that was really fun. But in second year when I was juggling a lot of extracurriculars and I was also the news editor of the student paper I think I found that really tough and I started to feel myself pulling away from the paper a lot because it became a job; it stopped being something that I loved doing every week. It became something that I was expected to do and every Wednesday, I don’t know if you remember, but we used to have half days, but I had to spend the whole Wednesday in this tiny little office doing the layout and the editing.
In the beginning I loved that responsibility, I absolutely loved it. Every Wednesday I would love being there with my team, it was such a great experience and then slowly overtime as I felt myself juggling it more and more with the other things I was involved in and my studies it just became a real chore. I started delegating it, I started skiving off, I started not doing a good job because it wasn't fun. I didn’t want to be there anymore and eventually when I left the paper and they replaced me I felt a lot of relief and I think that's when I knew that print wasn't necessarily for me. Writing is supposed to be fun it was always cathartic, and then came this great weight to the expectation and also this great weight of responsibility that I didn't necessarily want at the time. Generally, I look back now, and I think I have made a very correct decision for me. I still love writing and I should write more, but I want to write on my own terms.
Genuinely, I think who I have evolved into as a person since that time at like 1920 I think my skills as a human being are so much better suited for a career in broadcast journalism. There were a few factors I took into consideration when I decided to become a journalist. It was my 4th year so around the time that we met, in 2017 I think, I made the decision that I was going to be a journalist full time and I applied to journalism school. I really had to weigh up the options about what kind of stream of journalism I would go into. They have all the options at these schools so I went with broadcast in the end because I could imagine myself working in TV. I'm a visual person, I like video editing, I like voicing, I love long form stories. I felt that this was the right thing for me, I could see myself working in that field, I have good communication skills, I'm very chatty, I feel like I’ve slotted into that world better rather than writing in an office at 10:00 PM. But that was my choice, and that was my personal decision.
I still have huge love for print, even though everyone says that it's dying. Some of my favourite things come from print. I read articles religiously, I take an hour every day to read every medium I'm a fan of and I love print but it's not necessarily where I saw myself in the long run, I think.
And just to kind of wrap up I just wanted to know if you have any words of advice for people looking to get into broadcasting, whether they want to do it as a freelancer or not, what would be your advice to them?
I’m going to speak from a broadcast journalism perspective because that’s what I know. I definitely have a few words of wisdom that I would tell anybody trying to break into TV.
If you have a niche, you have to use that niche. Try to push that niche wherever you can. If you have a background interest in sports, that’s excellent, you can diversity into being a TV sports journalist. If you have an interest in tech or entertainment, pop culture, environment, you can definitely push these things as a niche. Even better if you have a portfolio. Try to gather stuff for your portfolio as early as possible. Even if it’s stuff you filmed and edited yourself and put a voice over on and put it on YouTube. Get a show reel and try to stack up as much work experience as possible – work experience is really hard to get in this industry, internships are impossible! Trust me, I’ve been there, I know! It’s horribly difficult, the rejection is painful and there are so many people and there’s so much talent. It’s ruthlessly competitive. So, if you’re not able to get the experiences yourself, make your own: take your camera – everyone has a camera on their phone now; editing software is an investment and there’s a lot of free options too. Use platforms like YouTube and Vimeo to make your own bodies of work.
Branding. If you can brand yourself, have your own website and your own collection of work… I have such a great example in front of me. Yasmina has a fantastic website – I was on it earlier – and she has links to all of her stuff in one place. Her book, her writing, her blog, her podcast. It’s all in one place. When you’re trying to break into the industry as a rookie, as a newcomer, that’s the kind of thing that will set you apart because all of your work is in one place and you can send that to people, and they can peruse all your things and get a sense of who you are or who you could be as a journalist. So branding is definitely important.
As is your social media background. Try to go through your old posts. As a journalist, there is a level of impartiality, and you have to be careful with what you’re tweeting and retweeting and spouting about. You can’t express too much of a one-sided opinion. You have to be careful, and you have to start very early on. Also, have a professional account – if you’re going to have an account where you send memes to your friends, make that one private and make sure it’s not linked back to you. Have a professional account that looks professional too. Most journalists are on Twitter and it’s a great place to connect. I have found that it’s so valuable to follow colleagues and my peers’ work on Twitter, and also reach out to them! Journalists are so chatty; we love to talk! Make a Twitter account, make sure your LinkedIn is curated to the kind of work that you need to be doing. You really need to curate yourself in this industry.
And I have some words of wisdom for Black or Asian or minority ethnic journalists, like it is really tough This is a very white industry and it’s difficult to make your way in there. But I hope, wholeheartedly that things are going to change, I feel like there has definitely been a shake in the way race is perceived in the newsroom now, and there is definitely pressure to have more diversity in it, so make that be known. Don’t be ashamed to talk about your background and definitely make that a factor in why they should hire you, because you have a unique perspective on things. You can bring things to the story that other people might not be able to catch if you weren’t there. You might speak other languages that are essential in the newsroom. The number of times we’ve heard someone shout across the newsroom “Does anybody speak Ukrainian? Does anybody speak Nepalese?” or something… Diversity is an asset. Multiculturalism is an asset, and newsrooms, in my experience don’t always reflect what society looks like, but I hope that changes. I hope that in the years to come there will be more journalists of colour in the newsroom to be able to provide more perspectives on stories. And also bring light to voices that are different to the ones we spend a lot of time focusing on. That’s something I’m very passionate about. If you’re a journalist of colour, that’s not a hindrance, it’s definitely an asset and you should take it as such. Use it as a selling point if you have an interview or an opportunity to network with someone.
Thank you again Vedika for doing this. And I’m so grateful that you found time in your very hectic schedule to do this. I don’t take it lightly.
Thank you so much for having me! It’s been such a pleasure!
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Because Vedika is determined to bless us, she shared some of her top tips to getting that first journalism job, make sure you read up on it and don’t hesitate to get in touch with her if you have any questions.
As always, I hope that this has been insightful and that it will help you have clearer ideas on what different folks do in the world of journalism. The world of news production sounds exciting and I might just have to check it out for myself someday.
Make sure you keep up with everything that Vedika is and will be up to because good things are coming for all our headtops! And definitely do not forget to check out her documentary on boxing - I’ve even embedded it below to make it easier for you!
Please also let me know who you’d like to see me talk to for the next edition of Faces of Freelance and some questions that you would want answered when the next interviewee is determined. Get in touch with me through the contact page, for any and all (constructive) comments, suggestions, and requests!
If you found this insightful and know someone who could benefit from this post, then show them (and me) some love by sharing it with them so that we can all Flourish in Freelance.
As always, thank you for spending this time with me and see you soon x
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