Crain’s Chicago seeks nonprofits reporter

Top 3 Reasons To Apply:

• The beat. The subjects include Chicago’s biggest nonprofit institutions and foundations, funded and controlled by the city’s movers and shakers, and often overlooked by most competing news outlets. You’d have a chance to make an impact.
• The colleagues. Crain’s is a collegial place, where reporters and editors work together. Reporters also are experts in their fields, and the editors are experienced in business and magazine journalism.
• The company. Crain’s Chicago Business is a family-owned publication that is buffered from the turmoil afflicting much of the media. Though the parent company is 100 years old, an entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.

The beat

• We are not looking for someone to write reviews.
• We ARE looking for someone to be THE source for news and analysis of Chicago’s nonprofits, from the biggest tourist attractions such as the Art Institute and the Field Museum to cultural institutions such as Lyric Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Steppenwolf and Goodman Theaters and to foundations including MacArthur, Joyce and McCormick. The entities which make Chicago a world capital.
• The reporter also will be expected to break news and spot trends. The reporter must understand financial reports. He or she also must be able to write quickly on deadline and, at the same time, produce long-form profiles or features. We are looking for someone who can cover these institutions and their financial backers as businesses.

Experience, skills, and abilities needed for success:

• Come to Crain’s with at least several years of experience in professional journalism.
• An expert on this beat, generating a steady flow of story ideas and setting the agenda on this critical beat.
• Know Chicago and be familiar with the big names in philanthropy and know how to cultivate sources.
  Be well-read, be curious, be able to work with peers without drama and take guidance from editors, again without drama.
• Be ambitious and competitive, and unafraid; the reporter should want to make a difference and be first with news.
• Analytical and unafraid of numbers; accuracy is essential.
• Know how to organize their thoughts and write with a point of view; be a clear and clean writer.

Crain’s does not have production quotas, but generally the reporter should be able to post two to three stories per week for our breaking news website and one longer, enterprise piece each week for print and the web. This means the reporter must be a multitasker.

To apply, go here.