Criminal Justice and Investigative Correspondent

Location: Santa Cruz, on the highly livable and lively Central Coast of California, 1.5 hours south of San Francisco.

Description: As Lookout Santa Cruz enters its fourth year, we’ve successfully become the primary news medium for thousands of people, accomplished an array of accountability reporting and established ourselves as a high-quality, trustworthy source of news and information.

Now, we are adding one key position to our highly collegial newsroom — the largest and best covering all of Santa Cruz County, one intended to advance our reporting and drive the breadth and depth of the work we give readers each week.

Our connect-the-dots reporting, with a team led by Managing Editor Tamsin McMahon, has already won credit for readers for its work. With this position, we now can expand that impact, both in criminal justice and more widely.

Our newest correspondent position will be focused on criminal justice as a specific beat and on in-depth reporting across a range of topics overall.

Lookout now lays out a plan for covering both the criminal system — law enforcement agencies and the courts — and the community’s perspective on it, from all relevant points of view. There are real issues of jail treatment, opioid overdose response and the familiar mental health challenges that communities face. While violent crime is relatively low, property crime, in parts of the county, is high, underreported and a significant concern of some. Homelessness, hugely impactful in the county, poses a number of questions about the reality and perception in downtown areas, struggling to rebuild.

Our new correspondent brings a fair, experienced, inventive and nuanced approach to these issues, surfacing fresh reporting. We expect a successful candidate to bring a rich background of accountability and watchdog work, showing the ability to take on broader issues as well as breaking impactful news.

The correspondent will work both independently and collaboratively with editors and fellow correspondents to deepen and broaden our coverage. The demonstrated ability to collaborate is a must.

If you are interested, please respond with a cover letter describing your capabilities and drive to this work, and include relevant examples of it.

Responsibilities:

Lead our investigative agenda, working with editors to identify and prioritize opportunities for investigative and in-depth reporting on the criminal justice beat and across the newsroom.
Lead a beat focused on criminal justice.
Rapidly cultivate sources within law enforcement and the criminal justice system to proactively identify stories of interest to our readers.
Produce quick-turn and long-term investigative stories that meet the needs of a fast-paced newsroom.
Work with and mentor other reporters to develop in-depth stories on their beats and spanning multiple beats, including assisting with records requests and source development.
Be a newsroom leader on investigative tools, such as Nexis, public records and datasets (publicly available or compiled) that can be mined for stories.
Track an ongoing newsroom-wide database of FOIA and public records requests.

Essential Skills:

Eight to 10 years of experience as a daily news reporter, preferably covering public safety, criminal justice, crime and courts.
Demonstrated track record of investigative journalism in a daily newsroom.
Knowledge of open records laws and libel laws.
Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and handle multiple and changing priorities simultaneously.
Excellent news judgment and outstanding writing and editing skills, including an ability to turn investigative reporting into compelling narratives.
Data journalism skills, particularly data collection and data analysis
Comfort with the format of Lookout’s correspondent-focused model, and the personality it brings to the work.
Desire to work in an entrepreneurial, fast-growth startup environment, embracing the agility and flexibility required to thrive within a new business.

Nice to have:

Bilingual abilities in Spanish and English.
Editing abilities are a plus.
Ability to create visualizations that aid storytelling.
Evolving applied knowledge of AI use.

What we offer:

Lookout is reviving a strong local journalism in Santa Cruz County, and soon expanding to other cities as well. We’re a national model local news startup founded and led by Ken Doctor, Newsonomics business of news analyst, who has written about our goals and progress.

Correspondents are full-time employees. We offer a highly competitive salary and medical, dental and optical benefits, as well as a 401(k), with matching. As we are looking for people who develop a deep understanding of the community, the position is in-person only in Santa Cruz County in our newsroom located in downtown Santa Cruz, across the street from the legendary Bookshop Santa Cruz. The vibrant community is home to iconic beaches and state parks, world-class surfing, a university, and a lively arts, food and culture scene.

Lookout Local is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.