Santa Cruz Lookout seeks business and tech correspondent

Lookout Local seeks a curious, versatile reporter to cover business and technology in the story-rich Santa Cruz area, home of a disproportionately large and active small business community, fast-emerging biotech, and beachheads of Google and Amazon. Economic recovery is the story of 2021, and we’re looking for a reporter able to both dig deeply into the questions of economic re-development and of small business owner struggles to transition. Data + lots of human storytelling.

We seek a reporter who is enthused about being part of a new model of community-centric, mobile-first, topically knowledgeable, intensely local journalism. This person will aim to meet readers’ needs in multiple ways, from quick, useful, information hits to in-depth accountability reporting, providing actionable service journalism for Lookout’s readers, smartly and creatively using multiple engagement channels to connect with audiences.

Lookout Local’s correspondents are the prominent public face of Lookout Local in all the diverse communities it will serve. They bring the news, information, and community goings-on — the day-to-day authoritative and readable reporting — to readers. And they are recognizable, their faces on Lookout and in the community.

This, for those embracing the journalism of the 2020s, is a fresh, unparalleled opportunity. Lookout has launched with a wide open palette, as our correspondents innovate a new model of engaging, smart, trustworthy and often personality-including local news journalism. Lookout’s correspondents grasp the credible heritage of the news trade and of the continuing need for fundamental, solid reporting, one local readers place great trust in. At the same time, they know that digital formats, including text, audio and video, offer many options for journalists and a still-in-formation new set of abilities for readers.

Readers can now learn much more about their communities, their neighbors, their problems and their full opportunities to take part in civic life, and Lookout intends to provide them that local opportunity. To that end, Lookout, and its correspondents, make a double promise to readers. Throughout its products, Lookout offers up “What to Know,” in shorter and longer form and “What to Do,” how people can take partake in the life of the community in a myriad of ways.

We seek our first group of correspondents who want to join us on this expedition to build a new, sustainable model for local journalism.

To apply, go here.