Paperless journalist: dealing with my work portfolio

After moving house, I decided my life has too much paper in it. At a estimate, paper made up almost a third of the weight shifted between houses.

Going 100 percent paperless is neither possible or desirable. But I can reduce my paper use by 90 percent. And recycling the bulk of my existing paper is a reasonable goal.

I’ve been a journalist for 30 years – which doesn't help. I have boxes full of newspaper cuttings, magazines I’ve written and edited and other portfolio material. It runs to many filing cabinets.

I’ve also been writing online material since the late 1980s – remember Apple’s eWorld, Compuserve and Bix?

A journalist’s portfolio is an important work record. It’s invaluable when finding new work – particularly now I’m a freelance writer.

The portfolio also has a wealth of useful information, story ideas and memory joggers.

Paperless, not perfect

I’ve systematically scanned and stored my old clippings. Reduced the inevitable duplication and generally tidied up. Scanning takes – I don't expect to finish for many months yet.

One lesson I learnt early on is to not be too fussy about scan quality. It needs to be neat and tidy, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Another lesson I’ve learnt is to store scanned material as PDFs. They are more compact and easier to use than TIFF or other file formats.

Perhaps the hardest aspect of converting my portfolio to a digital format is sharing. I can mail prospective clients examples of stories, but having material for casual browsers is difficult because web hosts charge by the MB for storage and I’m only allowed so much traffic a month. Big PDFs quickly chew through my quota.

As an experiment, I’m storing some portfolio PDFs in a public folder on my Microsoft SkyDrive. As an example, here’s a piece I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald’s The Sydney Magazine in October 2004.

I’d be interested to hear of ways other paperless journalists are storing their portfolios.