Community Journalist/Reporter

A position has opened at The Queens Ledger / Brooklyn Star News Group for a community reporter/editor. It requires an organized, motivated journalist to cover community news in neighborhoods within Brooklyn & Queens NY. The office is in Woodside, Queens. The position requires either a knowledge of Queens/Brooklyn or the ability to quuickly learn about life here. We publish a collection of eight hyper-local weekly community newspapers - mostly paid circulation & mailed subscription based. We also publish a monthly glossy print magazine focusing on business in Queens. Some of our newspapers have been continually published each week for over a hundred years. Our readers count on us to bring them information about events, news and community based programs for their families.

We, of course, are not just newspapers anymore. We produce 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 can teach you our platforms, but we prefer if you know wordpress and indesign, as our reporters/editors are hands-on with publishing on our platforms. As long as you have desire and are digitally savvy, a curious journalist and are enterprising, you could be right for us. 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 curating newsletters, 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, 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.

An ability to quickly underatand community and civic and local political leaders.

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

You should be a 'New York News Junkie"

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 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

What else:

If you indeed have experience in leading an editorial staff, apply, and we can have a discussion on a different level. This leader has experience and can teach the staff reporter and community contributors how improve their planning, sourcing, reporting and writing, while carrying out a strategy to grow our reach both digitally and in print.