The Orlando Sentinel is looking for a business reporter to focus strongly on Central Florida tourism, including Disney, Universal and SeaWorld, as well as other issues and trends involving our region’s biggest industry. The ideal candidate will have excellent reporting skills with a proven ability to use public records and develop sources. The reporter also must be adept in the fast-paced digital world, posting stories as they break and supplementing them as more details emerge. The job comes with company-provided annual passes to key theme parks. Candidates must have at least three years of experience at a daily news organization with a bachelor’s degree. This reporter will initially work a Tuesday through Saturday shift, with general assignment duties on Saturday.
What you will do:
- Being fast and accurate: Always striving to provide readers with what we know, when we know it. Be transparent about sources of information
- Employing creativity every day to conceive of stories, produce or secure visuals, get sources to cooperate, corroborate facts and present information to readers in the most relevant, interesting way
- Maximizing audience engagement with the site through use of various storytelling formats, including photo galleries, video, aggregation and a variety of layouts
- Creating news and features content that is strong on grammar, punctuation, clarity and accuracy
- Taking the initiative to fact-check, run background checks and confirm information before publication
- Delivering on time with minimal to moderate supervision and editing
- Cultivating beats, where appropriate, and sources
- Uncovering and proposing exclusive stories on newsworthy events and trends
- Contributing story ideas several times a week, including identifying and following trends outside assigned beat or topic areas, and informing supervisors of possible story ideas arising from trends
- Employing creativity to present all information in easy-to-read, visually appealing, informative and engaging format
- Conceiving, creating, editing, aggregating or producing various types of content. Depending on the department, this may include videos, maps, timelines, multimedia, documents, graphics, photo galleries, gifs and social aggregations
- Taking or securing photos and making basic videos and making them available in the content management system
- Measuring performance of one’s own digital content through audience engagement metrics and working with audience team develop tactics and strategies to build audience
- Working with data and visuals teams, as appropriate, to deepen reporting and produce data-visualization content items
- Participating in production videos and live streaming with visuals department, as appropriate
- Striving to meet specific individual goals to be assigned on a regular basis by supervisor
What you will bring:
- Professional-level grasp of proper grammar, spelling, punctuation
- Ability to write accurately, with clarity, without bias
- Knowledge of libel laws and adherence to the Tribune’s and Editorial’s codes of ethics
- Three years of experience at a daily news organization
- Bachelor’s degree
- Ability to multitask and perform in a fast-paced deadline driven environment.
- Ability to work independently when required while at the same time operate efficiently in a team dynamic
- Up-to-date skills on various digital platforms
- Familiarity with current events and newsmakers
- Quick-turnaround skills
- Basic familiarity with analytics and ability to translate data into tactics and strategies, including ability to use metrics from Chartbeat, Adobe Analytics, social and other tools
- Knowledge of Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms and ability to develop/follow best practices for social
- Basic knowledge of SEO best practices and ability to research SEO and appropriately populate fields and headlines
- The ability to initially work a Tuesday through Saturday shift, with general assignment duties on Saturday
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