Allen Salkin: Freelance Success Story

NYU alum Allen Salkin lives a contradiction. Although he tells young journalists it’s almost impossible to earn a living as a freelancer, he’s made a successful career out of writing for Cosmopolitan, Details, Talk, In Style and The New York Times, just to name a few.

Before the 37-year-old earned his master’s in newspaper journalism in 1995, he held a long series of offbeat jobs that included working as a casting director in Hong Kong and selling rubber duckies at trade conventions.

The self-described “vintage Gen X slacker” attributes some of his recent success to his NYU training. “My education was indispensable to me,” Salkin said. “It helped me understand what it took to actually have a career in journalism.”

His work during an investigative reporting class at NYU helped him parlay an internship into a three-and-a- half-year stint as a reporter at the New York Post, where he covered everything from surrogate court to Jerry Seinfeld’s wedding.

Last year he even applied his narrative skills to the world of stand-up comedy, suggesting that the process isn’t all that different from writing a good story. “You need to captivate the audience at every single step and present them with a compelling character,” he explained. “It forces you to stay to a concise and clear narrative.”

But now he’s taken a step back from the fast-paced freelance life and is writing a book, as well as teaching workshops to aspiring journalists on how to pitch their ideas, a talent he attributes to his background as a salesman. “The main thing to remember is that a story is an idea, not just a topic,” he advised. “You have to have excellent story ideas that are perfectly suited to the publication that you’re pitching them to.”

He also believes that freelancers must possess an abundance of optimism, commenting that among the scores of “nos” writers hear when they’re starting out, it only takes a few good “yesses” to launch a career. “The longer I’ve been away from NYU,” he said, “the more I realize what they told me there was true.”

– Natalie Kurz, G’03