“The so-called journalist” – Raymond Briggs
“Intellectual gymnast” – Lauren Booth
“Gripping stories on topics you otherwise may never have heard about”
– Freelance Writing Awards
Etan is an award-winning, London-based freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience on national newspapers. His work has featured in publications on four continents, including The (London) Times and Sunday Times, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Financial Times, The Independent, The ‘i’, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Metro, Evening Standard, ES Magazine, New Statesman, UnHerd, The Forward, Jewish News, CNN, The South China Morning Post and The Australian. He has also appeared as a commentator on Sky News, Times Radio, LBC, London Live and Talk Radio Europe. Previously a news sub-editor on the Daily Mail, he wrote headlines, edited copy and drew pages for Britain’s second-biggest newspaper, having secured a spot on its graduate trainee scheme.
He was a winner of The Times’s Kate Alderson prize, with a reporting stint at The Australian in Sydney. He was also the winner of the first ever pan-European blogging contest, beating 80 competitors from every member state in a four-month project covering the European elections. He was a runner-up at the inaugural Freelance Writing Awards, in the news and investigations category. And he has been profiled by i-D magazine as a ‘fearless young journalist’.
Etan has interviewed Sir David Attenborough, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Jean-Michel Jarre, Rachel Weisz, Sir Quentin Blake, Chris Evans, Graham Norton, Judith Kerr, Sir Michael Morpurgo, Dame Zandra Rhodes, Michael Bond, Mo Abudu, Sir Terence Conran, Raymond Briggs, Nadiya Hussain, Nile Rodgers, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Tim Peake, Thomas Keneally, Emily Maitlis and Kevin Pietersen, as well as co-founders of Twitter, Wikipedia and Snapchat, and the most-watched TED speaker and most-cited engineer in history.
He has reported on everything from group therapy for domestic abusers to Britain’s communists, North Korean refugees, Banksy ‘salvagers’ and Middle East head-banging. He has also unmasked Pablo Escobar’s “first-born son”, penned several front-page stories; covered arts in Adelaide and beer cheese in Kentucky and endured a shift doing the ‘best job in the world’. Oh, and he once joined Danny Boyle’s acting army.
Etan studied history at the University of Bristol – where he won two student media awards, news writer and news features writer of the year – before gaining a postgraduate diploma in newspaper journalism at City University, London.
Etan Smallman 