Politics & Policy Reporter
The Miami Herald and McClatchy are looking for a well-sourced, creative, audience-focused reporter to cover the policy issues most important to voters in Florida. The reporter in this job will join our politics and policy reporting team and play a lead role in the Florida Influencers Series and Priorities Summit project, an ongoing initiative to redefine election coverage by focusing on policy challenges.
The ideal candidate will excel at building networks of sources, both in the policy community and in state and local government, to produce thoughtful, agenda-setting journalism. You will be expected to deliver original reporting that is not only competitive but dominant on the stories that matter most to our audience.
In this role, the successful candidate will work closely with our Audience Growth Team to engage readers and viewers on the policy issues they want state government to tackle, and the issues important to them in the 2020 election year. She or he will use that insight as a starting point for reporting, diving deeply into policy challenges to explore the potential solution and the hurdles standing in their way, and to uncover the political considerations affecting decision-makers and their willingness to grapple with these issues.
This reporter must have excellent reporting and writing skills. She or he will be expected to be an idea generator with strong social roots and a knowledge of the most important issues relevant to the Herald's readers and viewers. The Herald and McClatchy are collaborative environments and the reporter in this role is expected to work closely with colleagues throughout our news organization as well as peers on the Influencers Series in other newsrooms nationwide.
Key responsibilities:
- Report and write about the policy challenges identified by our audience as most important in the upcoming election year
- Collaborate with the politics and policy reporting teams to identify areas of cooperation and creative approaches to coverage
- Collaborate with the Audience Growth Team to engage our readers and viewers, and to connect our audience with the Influencer Series and Priorities Summit
- Write with a digital-first mentality. That includes thinking about shareable headlines, SEO, using links in text and embedding videos, podcasts and other assets.
- The reporter will be responsible for creating online and print packages in our content management systems.
Minimum requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree
- 5 years of reporting experience in a news organization.
- A track-record of breaking news and delivering insightful analyses on policy topics.
- An understanding of audience metrics and social media trends, and an eagerness to respond to them
Fresh writing style, with an engaging, conversational voice. - Ability to work with and process data.
- Solid understanding of the current political/economic/social themes driving election coverage.
- A collaborative approach that prioritizes getting the best story for our audience.