Pasco and Latino Communities Reporter

Overview

The Tri-City Herald is looking for a collaborative, audience-focused reporter to elevate our coverage of our fastest-growing city, Pasco, and our Latino communities. Our coverage area encompasses the Mid-Columbia and Lower Yakima Valley which represent the highest percentage of Latino residents in Washington state. We’re looking for a reporter who can balance daily and breaking news, along with quick-turn enterprise stories that focus on the changing face of the Tri-Cities community.

The Tri-Cities -- Kennewick, Richland and Pasco -- is a growing community of 320,000 in southeast Washington in the heart of the state’s agricultural and wine country but also at the hub for energy, engineering and scientific research. Our journalism is all about local. We pride ourselves on breaking news first, producing hard-nosed, accountability journalism and telling unique stories that our audience can’t get anywhere else.

This is a job for a resourceful digger who understands that building a loyal audience around a topic requires publishing consistently and often. You are right for this role if you understand that frequent publishing builds habits in readers, who come to trust that they can depend on you to deliver news that impacts their lives, giving them a reason to come back and engage.

• Focus on stories that build readership
• Engage in multimedia storytelling
• Demonstrate speed, competitiveness and SEO savvy
• Use social media platforms to help distribute and highlight work
• Understand and use audience metrics to help increase readership
• Shoot photos and video when needed
• Live in the Tri-Cities

This position will be based in our Kennewick, Wash., office and could, when necessary, involve working nights and/or weekends.

We are part of McClatchy Media Company, a digitally-driven company focused on innovation, with newsrooms in 30 communities in the United States. McClatchy Media’s journalists are expected to take advantage of opportunities to ethically harness and leverage artificial intelligence and other automation to enhance and elevate their work and to find efficiencies that free them to focus on source-building and high quality, deeply reported journalism.

The anticipated base pay range for this position is between $24.04 and $31.25 per hour. Individual base pay may vary within that range depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, department equity and relevant education.

• College degree or equivalent work experience.
• 1-3 years of reporting experience.
• Strong writing skills, excellent news judgment and a demonstrated ability to “see the story” that is going to matter to readers.
• Unwavering commitment to accurate, ethical journalism.
• A deep curiosity and high energy
• Ability to build source networks and bring a constant flow of story ideas.
• A commitment to diverse coverage through community engagement and source building
• A track record for innovation, learning and using new skills and technologies, especially AI.
• Ability to shoot video and photos on scene when warranted.
• Comfort with a job that will be demanding, fast-paced and constantly evolving.
• Ability to work with data, public records and business reports.
• A collaborative work ethic and the ability to communicate easily with people on our team and across the company
• Must have valid driver’s license and vehicle insurance required (at least minimum insurance required for the state in which the employee works).

To apply , include a persuasive cover letter, your resume and 4 to 6 examples of your best work, showing a variety of skills.

As a journalist at McClatchy, you will join a supportive, flexible, collaborative team. McClatchy strives to be an employer of choice, and our benefits package is made with this goal in mind. With a focus on health, well-being, wealth and daily life, our package options include healthcare coverage for employees and their families, financial protection from expected and unexpected expenses, multiple no-cost wellness resources and even coverage for four-legged friends.

Our overall benefits package also includes a 401(k) with employer match, competitive paid…