Managing Editor

About Lookout Local

Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s mission is to provide fair, accurate, and non-partisan news, focusing on the role of business in shaping a community through taxes and jobs. We are committed to reviving local journalism and engaging with the community to reflect their needs and interests. Lookout Eugene-Springfield now approaches its first anniversary, having already achieved great traction -- audience, membership, advertising, and community trust -- It is part of Lookout Local, a now fast-growing, next-generation West Coast-based local news network. Lookout Santa Cruz won the 2024 Pulitzer for Breaking News, and Lookout's fiercely mission-driven, business-driven model is winning wide national notice. Check out our network page: https://lookout.co/network.

Our workplaces are in-person, in-community, collaborative and collegial. We are building a diverse, highly skilled and mission-driven group of journalists, community builders and business people intent on maintaining our culture of learning, growth and community service.

About the role

The Managing Editor applies the Lookout Local journalism model. The ideal candidate will demonstrate well-experienced news judgment, excellent story ideation and line editing skills and most of all be committed to creating a great seven-day-a-week news report.

The Managing Editor helps our team of journalists produce excellence every day, throughout the day, serving readers’ evolving needs with a wide range of meaningful and local/personal journalism, responsive to our diverse communities’ changing needs. The Managing Editor must be comfortable and enthusiastic about the wide range of content we will deliver, from investigative and accountability work to best-in-class beat stories, breaking news and service journalism that answers readers’ questions.

We focus on impactful stories and, while being a primary news source, keep our readers briefly updated on step-by-step governmental proceedings and other actions. We are high on explanatory, connect-the-dots reporting and pointed knowing writing. Whether in 500 or 2,500 words, we tell the readers what we know, well-sourced and well-told. We fit the formats to the content, using Q&As and Ask Lookouts, and other emerging formats – including video – in addition to narrative journalism.

We need a Managing Editor with extensive story-editing experience and a track record of leading teams of journalists. The ideal candidate brings deep knowledge of the Eugene-Springfield area, Oregon and/or the Pacific Northwest.

Responsibilities

• Editorial Direction:
• • Working with the Executive Editor, the Managing Editor will help direct the daily newsroom, working with correspondents in planning, reporting, sourcing and first-line editing.
  • The managing editor will ensure we are producing high-quality, trustworthy, non-partisan stories and community information, working with Lookout colleagues on multiple evolving products to distribute that content.
• Community Engagement:
• • Help lead Lookout’s overall community engagement work, working with both correspondents and the wider Lookout team.
  • Look for ways, in digital and in person, to gain reader insights and feedback.
  • Represent Lookout Eugene-Springfield at community events, strengthening its role as a trusted local institution.
• Maintain and Strengthen Standards:
• • Ensure content meets the highest journalistic standards of fairness, accuracy, and clarity, delivered with trustworthiness and lack of partisanship.
• Innovation and Growth:
• • Apply the full toolbox of modern digital creation and distribution tools, working closely with colleagues, especially in audience analysis.

Qualifications

• You should have at least seven years of journalism experience, and at least three as a newsroom manager. The position is on-site, in our collaborative office in downtown Eugene.
• Rock-solid journalism judgment, intuition and taste.
• Demonstrated experience, with references to match, on story editing, news publication and deadline experience as well as proven ability to edit with painstaking clarity, providing readers with the context they need.
• Adept at using Newspack or modern content management systems and tools.
• Desire to work in an entrepreneurial, fast-growth startup environment, embracing the agility and flexibility required to thrive within a new business.
• Experience and comfort with the pace of digital-first journalism, and the digital technologies that power it.
• Ability to engage diverse local communities in Lookout’s work.
• Ability to think through visuals that will aid storytelling and work with colleagues to activate them.
• Demonstrated adaptability, especially with new topical coverage areas and communities.
• Comfort learning new technology and experience working in content management systems, producing, editing and dressing stories with related media (photos, videos, etc).
• Comfort with the format of Lookout’s correspondent-focused model, and the personality it brings to the work.
• Plusses: Bilingual abilities, data, and audio/video.

About Lookout Eugene-Springfield

In one year, Lookout Eugene-Springfield has become the largest local newsroom in Lane County and is the destination for local news and information for this community. Known for journalism that goes beyond the superficial, Lookout staff always put the community at the center of our coverage.

Lookout is a full-time, in-person newsroom with an office located in downtown Eugene.

If you believe local journalism is built through relationships and visibility in the community, if you are curious, approachable, creative and eager to experiment with new storytelling formats while maintaining strong journalism standards, you could be the right fit for Lookout.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.
• Full-time benefits include highly competitive medical, dental, and optical benefits, and 401(k) with matching.
• Good PTO allowances
• Stock options in our growing company
• An opportunity to make a significant impact on and contribute to the revival of local journalism.
• A collaborative and mission-driven work environment.

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