County government/schools reporter

Date Posted	January 02, 2025
Industry	Newspapers, Digital Media
Specialty	Local News
Required Education	Bachelor’s Degree
Job Status	Full-time
Salary	$48,000 to $55,000

Description:

Come help take YachatsNews to the next level of professional reporting in the near-news desert of the central Oregon coast.

YachatsNews is a six-year-old nonprofit reader-funded news website. We believe we are the best local nonprofit news site in Oregon. In early 2025 we will be re-naming ourselves as the Lincoln Chronicle to reflect our broader coverage of Lincoln County.

YachatsNews started as a community service project in the Yachats area in 2019 and grew substantially over the last five years as it attracted readers for its straightforward, professionally reported news. It transitioned to a 501c3 nonprofit in 2022, hired its first full-time reporter in 2023.

We are now the leading and most trusted professional news organization on the central Oregon coast. In 2024 our site had 2 million page views – not bad for a county of 50,000 people. We are in strong financial shape, relying on reader donations, advertising and foundation grants to fund our operations. So now it’s time to hire a second reporter.

Who we are seeking:

YachatsNews/Lincoln Chronicle is looking for an experienced, energetic journalist to cover our most important topic areas from the Lincoln County seat of Newport. These will be the best stories of the week from county government, including courts; education and the countywide school district; housing and homeless issues; the vibrant Newport bay front; and breaking news of significance.

Our work focuses on local communities and institutions, covering issues, spotlighting problems and highlighting solutions.

We’re looking for a self-paced journalist to report and write regular, high-quality stories from the beat; generate story ideas in consultation with the editor; pursue story leads, both self-generated and assigned, with self-direction and solid news judgment; approach assignments on deadline with strong communication and follow through with the editor; and take photos to help illustrate your work.

The details:

n  The anticipated salary for this position is between $48,000 and $55,000 a year, depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience and education.

n  There is an annual cost of living increase in November and a second, performance-based increase on your hiring anniversary;

n  Up to $500 a month toward health insurance premiums or deposited into a health savings account;

n  Standard paid holidays; one floating day off every six months; two weeks paid vacation a year to start;

n  Mileage, cell phone and expense reimbursement.

Who you will be working with:

Editor Quinton Smith founded YachatsNews in 2019 after a 40-year career as a reporter and editor for United Press International and three Oregon newspapers. He worked in various editing positions at The Oregonian from 1984 to 2008 where he led a reporting team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. 

Staff reporter Garret Jaros is a mid-career journalist who has worked at daily and weekly publications in Oregon and Colorado. He covers the communities of Yachats and Waldport, the outdoors, natural resources and breaking news.

YachatsNews also relies on a stable of local and Oregon-based freelance reporters and partners with news organizations from around the state to provide a wide range of news and feature stories to its readers.

As part of our annual local fundraising campaign last June, we wrote this to explain why we wanted to hire another reporter:

Lincoln County falls in the bottom third of virtually all statewide economic and socio-economic measurements. Its population is older, poorer, less-educated than Oregon’s overall population. The income of 49 percent of the population is below the federal poverty level. Job growth is modest and concentrated in lower-wage industries centered on tourism and hospitality.

Adequate housing for workers, their families and many seniors is in low supply and expensive. Lincoln County ranks higher than the Oregon average for food insecurity and child poverty.

For the first six years of its operation YachatsNews has focused on basic, traditional general-interest news coverage. Now we want to take the next step and hire a second full-time reporter to focus on social services, schools/education, families and youth, substantive housing and homeless issues and under-represented — particularly low-income or economically disadvantaged — communities.

No other media in Lincoln County is attempting to do the work necessary to cover these issues.

If this interests you, please:

n  First, spend some time on our website (www.YachatsNews.com) to see what we do and if you are comfortable with that;

n  Second, send your resume and copies (or links) of a variety of samples of your work to editor Quinton Smith at [email protected]