Community Journalist/Reporter

A position has opened at The Queens Ledger / Brooklyn Star News Group for a community reporter. It requires an organized, motivated journalist to report community news coverage in areas of Brooklyn & Queens NY. The office is in Woodside, Queens.

Our collection of weekly newspapers has been bringing hyper-local news to Rockaway, Queens, Brooklyn and Rockland County for more than 100 years. We, of course, are not just newspapers anymore, but our legacy of tightly covering the news shows in our robust paid readership. We are embedded in our communities, where we have more than 700 distribution locations. For generations our Thursday weekly print product was the only way our readers and advertisers got the news. Today, we have a collection of TEN hyper-local weekly print newspapers, a monthly glossy business magazine covering Queens, a dozen news websites, daily newsletters & social media (@therockawaywave or @queensledger). We are looking for today's journalist, with a variety of skills including writing, curating, design, photography and proficiency in social media context. We will teach you our platforms. As long as you have desire and are digitally savvy, a curious journalist and are enterprising, you should be OK. We study and value consumer behavior from our content, to build upon the trust they have for our legacy print newspapers, which are sold and/or available on newstands and mailed every week. We use a flexible print and digital strategy to build engagement throughout all platforms. We run political polls, games, contests and cover just about any news item that our readers crave. Yes, the reader comes first in our shop. We get involved in endorsing for everything from the mayor's race to county leaders to local council elections - so we meet and interview most candidates running for local, state-wide and city-wide office.

Here you will be writing news, covering events, being in on political endorsement interviews, aggregating news for our daily newsletter and profiling movers & shakers in many of our communities. With a brand that has covered the news for more than a century our stories have impact. This position can be done for someone just out of school.

You will need to have a variety of skills including writing, curating, some design, photography and proficiency in social media.

We study and value consumer behavior of our content to build upon the trust they have for our news. We build on a flexible print and digital strategy so we can filter information to them on news and information they need, want and trust.

Key Factors in doing this job:

Strong news judgment and editing skills on the web is quite different than in print. You need to be knowledgeable and aware of the differences.

Be willing/able to execute plans for digital news growth and social media growth.

Being able to collaborate with all teams (editorial, marketing, distribution) to develop an engagement strategy that ensures growth, such as newsletters, social media, in-person engagement strategies, polls and more.

Own and foster relationships across the community so you get news that our sites can put out in a ‘real-news’ way. That means having the ability to use our freelancers and columnists to help achieve goals.

Helpful skills:

Indesign (you will be doing some layout of pages for pint), familiarity with wordpress and other CMS platforms, understanding of social media / news site context,

Office is in Woodside, Queens - just steps from the 7 train.

Salary to start 35K + travel +

Raises start in 3 months and again in 6 months. We are looking to hire immediately.

apply to jobs@queensledger.com