Correspondent, Transportation

Your Role:

We are seeking an experienced and energetic reporter to cover transportation in Southern California as part of a new watchdog team. This new team has the mandate to hold local government and powerful institutions to account.

The ideal candidate is savvy with data and public records, quick on their feet, and comfortable telling stories across multiple platforms. This role, to start, will be primarily focused on public safety issues tied to transportation and mobility. Deaths on L.A. roads continue to rise, despite funding to make our streets safer and the Vision Zero promise to bring traffic fatalities to zero by 2025. Last year, more people were killed by vehicles on L.A’s streets than died by homicide for the first time in a decade.

In this role, you will track spending under Measure HLA, which is aimed at forcing the city to follow its own safety improvement plans. You’ll also dig into why Vision Zero has fallen far short of elected officials’ stated goals. It will be essential to center coverage on stories that will have an impact on policies and the public’s overall understanding of this issue.

This will be a quick-paced team, with each reporter having a goal of producing no fewer than four stories each month.

LAist is a leading practitioner of engaged journalism. We believe engaging with our audience throughout the reporting process can result in coverage that better reflects and listens to the concerns of our community members. We also believe they know things that can lead us to groundbreaking work if we’re talking to them regularly.

The watchdog reporters will report to a Senior Editor.

LAist reporters and editors value collegiality and a sense of humor, especially under pressure.

Application Instructions: Please include a cover letter that links to your best work and describes the role you played in that work, what you learned along the way, and what you’d bring with you to the LAist newsroom.

Compensation: The pay rate for this opportunity will be no less than $93,000 annually. Exact pay rate determined by experience and education related to the role, organizational compensation structure, budget and internal equity.

Your Responsibilities:

• Produce high-impact investigations and daily enterprise reporting that betters the lives of Southern Californians, delivering four stories or more per month.
• Pitch, report and produce stories and features that include data, public records, and novel analyses as well as hold the powerful to account.
• Understand and deploy our promise to practice diversity, equity, and inclusion in how we assign, report, edit, produce, and distribute our journalism.
• Write, assemble, edit, track and mix stories for air and digital.
• Join shows and events as a subject matter expert.
• Work with editors to establish priorities and goals that are in line with the watchdog unit goals.
• Work with editors and other colleagues to help enhance investigative reporting across the newsroom.
• Work closely with our engagement team to understand audience needs to develop relationships and build collaborations with stakeholders.
• Other duties as assigned.

Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
• Five years or more of reporting or professional journalism or applicable experience.

Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

• Demonstrated reporting skills, digital news and production skills.
• Proven ability to identify and originate stories, report accurately and quickly and meet deadlines.
• Ability to deliver sophisticated analytical reporting.
• Ability to take complex detailed information and present it in easy-to-understand stories.
• Demonstrated capacity to use public documents, internet research, social media, interviews and other reporting methods to report stories.
• Ability and willingness to use audience engagement tools.
• Strong fundamental writing, reporting and interviewing skills.
• Creativity in using web, radio and social media platforms to convey information, engage listeners and users and utilize the capacity of different platforms.
• Commitment to learn and enact best journalism practices.
• Familiarity with public radio news.
• Facility with source and beat development; subject-matter expertise a plus.
• Ability to work simultaneously on short and long-term projects.
• Ability to evaluate and analyze reporting and facts to frame stories with strong narrative lines or compelling findings, context and scope.
• Become and remain a member in good standing of SAG-AFTRA by the thirtieth (30th) day of employment.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Fluency in Spanish or other languages commonly used in Southern California.

Reporting To This Position: N/A

Physical Demands and Working Conditions:

• May travel at times
• Must be able to perform the essential duties of the position with or without reasonable accommodation
• Required to move about in an office environment and sit for extended periods of time
• Required to move about in the community
• Frequent use of hands for data entry/keystrokes and simple grasping. Required to walk, sit, and stand; reach with hands and arms; balance, stoop, kneel, or crouch.

Working Condidtions:

• Moderate noise level
• Occasional exposure to prevalent weather conditions.

Southern California Public Radio (LAist 89.3/LAist.com/LAist Studios) is diverse in race, ethnicity, language, culture, social class, national origin, religious and political belief, age, ability, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation in addition to other markers protected by law.