NUJ may get ‘first full-time blogger’ member tonight
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 12 November 2007 at 18:13
Tags: AOL, Blogs, NUJ, blogging
The National Union of Journalists may tonight admit its first member to list ‘blogger’ as his job title.
The union’s London Freelance branch will tonight consider an application from Conrad Quilty-Harper, who is taking a year out from Hull University and is a freelance contributor to Engadget, the widely-read gadget blog ultimately owned by AOL.
However, Quilty-Harper’s case has also shown an anomaly in the union’s membership rules. Despite his freelance role, the freelance branch initially rejected Quilty-Harper’s application for membership last December on the grounds that he is a full-time student not enrolled on a journalism course.
He has been documenting his efforts to join the union by posting his correspondence with the branch on the photosharing website Flickr.
“I had to tell the guy who phoned up that I’m not going to be a student this year,” Quilty-Harper wrote in a post today showing the letter informing him of tonight’s meeting.
“Turns out I’ll have to phone them up and say I’m a student again next year, at which time they’ll revoke my membership and I’ll have to apply again.”
Writing on his blog last week, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear mentioned that he had approved the first membership application from someone listing their job title as “blogger” — apparently a reference to Quilty-Harper.
“Whilst we have hundreds, if not thousands of members who write blogs, this is the first person who earns their entire living solely from freelance blogging,” wrote Dear.
“Who says we’re not attracting new media workers?”
