Member Profile: Stoddard makes career as freelancer

An NPC member for 20 years and a freelance writer for more than 30, Brooke C. Stoddard can attest that the two make for a great combination.

“The National Press Club has been a rich resource through my years as a freelancer and I am sure can be one as well to many others,” says Stoddard, vice chairman of the Club’s Freelance Committee. The committee is ``continuously gaining strength and is on a mission both to help Club members and to enroll new freelancers from the Washington area and around the country.”

Stoddard worked as a writer and editor at Time-Life Books before switching to freelance in 1983. Based in Alexandria, where he still maintains an office, he wrote stories for travel, regional, and trade magazines. “When one assignment ended, editors would telephone with another,” he recalls.

As magazines dwindled after the dot.com crash in 2000, he worked part-time as editor of two magazines, on homes and on military history. As freelancing improved, he left these and wrote a book on the Battle of Britain called World in the Balance: The Perilous Months of June-October 1940. His second book will be published later this year: Steel: From Mine to Mill, the Metal that Made America.

Stoddard uses the Club as his downtown base to meet clients and its Eric Friedheim Library for research. He helps promote the Club’s Freelancer List to editors in Washington and around the country. He also attends the committee’s soirees, where freelancers gather in the Truman Lounge to exchange ideas and boost careers.

“With more journalists moving into freelancing, there is a growing need for career and benefits assistance, as well as the kind of support only friendships can bring,” he says. “The Club can provide these essential foundations for freelancers, and they in turn can enrich the character and reach of the Club.”

Contact Stoddard through his website, or e-mail at [email protected]