Level Up Your Freelance Writing Business

Karen Blum, head of ASJA’s Virtual Education Committee, is a Baltimore-based freelance writer who covers health, medicine and science for a variety of outlets. Her articles have appeared in the Baltimore Sun, AARP.org, Anesthesiology News, Kidney News, Pharmacy Practice News, Clinical Oncology News, Rheumatology News, Ophthalmology Management, Medscape, Infectious Disease Special Edition, CURE and many other publications. She also has written newsletter and magazine articles, blog posts and other marketing communications materials for hospitals, universities and medical/science associations.

Cari Shane is a freelance journalist and corporate content writer — and also a ski addict, hot yoga apologist, dog obsessed and a member of the gig economy playing Airbnb Superhost (for 10 years) to people from all over the world and dog sitter in the Colorado Rockies, which helps fund her need to ski. A Manhattan native, she lives carless (that’s carless not careless) in D.C. and writes for a wide variety of publications including AARP, Business Insider, Fast Company, National Geographic, Scientific American, Smithsonian and USA Today. Her full portfolio can be found at CariShane.Contently.com. She is on the ASJA board and chairs the organization’s Client Connections annual pitch event. Additionally, she volunteers in her community: DC Planned Parenthood, clinic defender; Ward 8 Woods, clean-up crew for the nonprofit fighting environmental injustice in DC’s poorest neighborhood; Anacostia Green Boats, clean-up crew for the Anacostia River conservation nonprofit; Street Sense Media, editor/writer for the Homeless Crisis Reporting Project.

Melba Newsome is an independent journalist, a former ASJA officer and winner of several ASJA awards, including the June Roth Award for Medical Journalism.

Melba began her career three decades ago as a generalist, publishing hundreds of articles on a wide variety of subjects and specializing in dramatic narratives for publications like Glamour, Oprah, Reader’s Digest, Marie Claire and Essence. Today she primarily covers health, science, and the environment with a focus on health, environmental and social justice. Her work appears in publications like Undark, Scientific American, Biographic, Science News, KFF Health News and Nature.

Melba is an Alicia Patterson fellow, a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow, a NIHCM journalism grantee and a four-time Pulitzer Center grantee. She is a mentor for the MIT HBCU Science Journalism Fellowship and an adjunct journalism professor at Wake Forest University, where she directs the Environmental & Epistemic Justice Journalism Fellowship.