MarketWatch is seeking an enterprising and energetic reporter to cover the retail and consumer beat, from big-box retailers, like Walmart and Target, to food companies and restaurant operators like McDonald’s, Chipotle and Yum! Brands. This is an opportunity to be part of a real-time desk that digs into company earnings reporters in search of news nuggets that other reporters miss. It’s also a beat where mergers and acquisitions can come fast and furiously.
The candidate must be able to balance between day-to-day news, while staying on the lookout for consumer trends amid a challenging macro-environment where supply-chain bottlenecks and inflation are wreaking havoc on many parts of the industry and sending prices surging.
The perfect candidate is nimble and team oriented and knows how to turn around clean copy quickly and accurately, and knows our mission is to inform our existing audience as it is to draw new readers to MarketWatch.
Essential Job Functions
- Minimum of 3 years in business journalism
- Eagerness to jump on breaking news
- Find unique angles in the consumer and retail beat
- Write features and deeply reported enterprise stories
- Possess the ability to write clean, clear prose both for industry insiders as well as average folks.
- Thrive in a fast-paced newsroom
- Break out short news items into complete articles
- Write headlines and news “pulses” under real-time deadlines
- Develop and cultivate sources and contacts throughout the industry, who can inform coverage
- Score newsmaker interviews with prominent people on your beat.
Other Skills
- Distill arcane concepts on your beat
- A passion for covering changes in consumer behavior and a desire to journal those changes using compelling charts and graphics
- Be a generous colleague and team player
To apply, go here.
Chris RoushChris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.