Berkeleyside seeks a thoughtful, proactive, highly organized contract editor to bring excellent news judgment and strong editing chops to our small but mighty team of journalists serving Berkeley, California. The contract position is for five months, February-June 2024, to cover family leave.
You’ll need proven experience in top editing, line editing, and copyediting, along with comfort and experience in delivering feedback to reporters on their work.
What you will do
- Collaborate closely with our editor-in-chief on planning our news coverage
- Work with the editor-in-chief on the daily story budget, monitoring for deadlines, regular cadence of story output and balance
- Advise in news meetings, and on daily reporting needs
- Advise two reporters, guiding them in covering their beat, developing story ideas and editing their stories
- Assign and edit stories in coordination with the editor-in-chief and reporters
- Ensure all our stories are free of factual and grammatical errors and typos and that care has been given to the best possible use of visuals and design. Ensure our daily reporting output follows our editorial and style policies.
- Edit obituaries submitted by readers
- Support the editor-in-chief on special coverage and long-term projects such as collaborations with other Cityside newsrooms or outside outlets and story packages
- Help edit and produce Berkeleyside’s weekly culture newsletter, The Scene, and its Saturday newsletter, working with reporters and Cityside’s audience engagement editor
Required qualifications
- 6+ years in a daily digital newsroom with at least 3 years of full-time experience managing journalists and editing breaking, daily and enterprise stories
- First-rate story editing and copyediting skills
- Proven ability to think deeply about journalistic projects, uphold editorial standards, and edit and coach journalists through any part of the pitching, reporting, writing, editing or production process
- Track record of thinking and working creatively and collaboratively with journalists, both internally (including editors, visual journalists, audience directors, data journalists and reporters) and externally (in the case of collaborations or partnerships with other newsrooms)
- Excellent verbal and written interpersonal communication
- Ability to maintain both empathy and journalistic rigor in fast-paced, distributed environments
- Experience with newsroom content management systems
- Ability to work with individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives
- Must be authorized to work in the United States
- Must be able to commute to our office in downtown Berkeley
We’re especially interested in candidates who …
- Have local daily news experience in a digital-first newsroom
- Have investigative editing experience
- Have experience working with visual journalists
- Have experience reporting and/or editing in Berkeley or a similarly sized, diverse city
- Have significant reporting experience
- Have worked with Newspack or another WordPress CMS
Compensation
The rate of pay will be $60 per hour for up to 40 hours per week. Preference for the editor to work from downtown Berkeley two days per week.
About Berkeleyside and Cityside Journalism Initiative
Founded in 2019, Berkeleyside is a pioneering nonprofit digital news platform in Berkeley, California, reporting on Berkeley and the East Bay. It was founded in October 2009 by journalists Frances Dinkelspiel, Tracey Taylor and Lance Knobel. In collaboration with new partners and leaders, they launched the Cityside Journalism Initiative in 2019 to bring more great local journalism to the Bay Area. Berkeleyside launched Nosh in 2012, which provides news about the East Bay’s dynamic food scene, and Cityside launched The Oaklandside in June 2020 to serve Oaklanders. Together, those outlets reach more than 500,000 people in the East Bay every month. Berkeleyside averages 1.2 million page views and 380,000 unique visitors a month.
Cityside is an equal opportunity employer and committed to building an organization that is diverse, and a work environment that is safe and inclusive for all employees. We recognize that people of color, gender-expansive people, the LGBTQ+ community, and people from working-class backgrounds have been marginalized in journalism organizations. We believe that these communities must be centered in the work that we do, so we strongly encourage applicants from these identities to apply.
Candidates from all spectrums of race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, socio-economic background, and levels of physical ability are welcome to apply. Cityside values a wide range of experience and encourage candidates to submit their applications even if candidates do not meet all preferred criteria.