Editor - Black Lens
The Need: The community-funded journalism team in Spokane, WA, is looking for a Editor to help serve the combined missions of The Black Lens newspaper, the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund and The Spokesman-Review newspaper regarding racial issues in our community.
The mission is to inform, educate and entertain readers, primarily in Eastern Washington and North Idaho, about local racial equity, race relations, historic/systemic racism issues and the complexity of their impacts on all of our lives in the Inland Northwest. A component of the mission is to provide coverage of national race-related issues and how their influence is felt at the local level. This reporting will be accurate, thorough, helpful, fair and lively.
The Role: This grant-funded position is the first editor to succeed the founding publisher and editor of The Black Lens, an independent publication that is focused on the news, events, people and issues of importance to the African American community. The editor will be skilled in helping journalists craft beats that focus on historically marginalized communities, including the Black community and Native American community in the Spokane area.
The editor will initially supervise a racial/social equity reporter whose journalism will include both daily stories and larger enterprise stories for both the general audience of The Spokesman-Review as well as The Black Lens’ monthly print audience. The editor will be skilled in developing story ideas and projects to make sure the beat is staying fresh and reporting timely race- and social issue-related stories. The editor will have a track record as a team player, as s/he will work closely with Spokesman editors. At the same time, the editor will demonstrate the understanding and experience to ensure the independence of The Black Lens. The editor will demonstrate success in adapting to changes in print circulation and in capitalizing on growth opportunities with digital audiences, in order to relaunch The Black Lens and grow its audience.
The Partnership Organizations: Two not-for-profit news organizations are funding this position. The Black Lens newspaper was founded in 2015 by Sandra Williams and grew to serve as a primary news source for African American neighborhoods in and around Spokane. It has been hand delivered, free of charge, to targeted locations in Spokane’s Black community, including churches, libraries, businesses and African American focused events. At its peak it had approximately 700 paid subscribers in Spokane and across the country who received the paper by mail each month. This editor together with other new positions will be part of the relaunch and expansion of The Black Lens.
The Community Journalism and Civic Education Fund was established at Spokane’s community foundation (Innovia) in 2016 in order to develop not-for-profit news entities and community-funded journalism in partnership with The Spokesman-Review. It has grown to fund almost one-third of the journalists in the Spokesman Newsroom and it started a popular event series, Northwest Passages. Northwest Passages hosts prominent authors, politicians and public figures and the resulting revenue generated supports a significant portion of the community-funded journalism published by The Spokesman-Review.