Writer and editor, The Post 

Location: Liverpool or surrounding areas.

Start date: 1st September (with some flexibility here — we could push to a fortnight earlier/later than this date).

Job description: You will be the first full-time staff member on The Post, a new digital newspaper publishing high-quality journalism about the people, issues and culture of Merseyside. This is an exciting opportunity to help create a pioneering news organisation in Liverpool that will serve the area for years to come.

Pay: Dependent on experience (approx salary range: 20k-25k). We’re a startup but your pay will rise as we grow our subscriber base.

About The Post: 

We have just received funding from Substack’s local journalism fund to hire a reporter and launch a fully-fledged operation in late September. The Post started in late 2020 as an offshoot of The Mill in Manchester and has built up thousands of readers during its soft-launch phase, publishing distinctive long reads and useful news briefings about the city and region. The idea behind The Post is to publish much less than a normal local newspaper and instead to focus on quality: speaking to sources rather than re-writing press releases, putting time into long reads about topics that aren’t in the news, and making journalism enjoyable to read again by focusing on good writing. We hope to create a new way forward for local news, one where readers are willing to pay for journalism again because it delivers them great writing, insightful reporting and useful recommendations.

The role: 

• Writing consistently high-quality journalism for The Post that goes a level deeper than most newspaper reporting — including in-depth features, insightful interviews, political analysis posts, historical features and stylish cultural coverage.
• Developing and publishing long form stories and investigations that require significant forward-planning and complex reporting.
• Commissioning and editing great stories from our network of freelance contributors across Merseyside.
• Developing exceptional contacts within Liverpool’s political, cultural and business worlds.
• Helping to grow The Post by posting on social media, helping with our marketing and helping foster strong bonds with our community of members.
• Working with The Mill’s writers and editors to share ideas, plan coverage and collaborate on big stories.

Skills required:

This role requires an extremely talented all-rounder — a great writer who is also very adept at finding and breaking news. It’s suited to someone who has varied interests and will enjoy writing about an art gallery one day and a political scandal the next. Our focus will always be on producing low volumes of insightful, immersive stories, so you need to be good with depth and nuance. You will be:

• A talented writer with a clear and engaging prose style. You will have a strong feel for the rhythm and structure of great features and won’t use awkward news cliches.
• A skilled reporter who has a good news sense, knows how to get hold of information and is good at developing sources.
• An entrepreneurial spirit who wants to build something new and create a new journalistic organisation that will serve the area for years to come.
• Someone who is excited about The Post’s mission to change journalism and find a new funding model for quality local news via subscriptions and rebuilding trust with readers.
• The kind of journalist who is committed to The Post’s key news principles: accuracy, nuance, thoughtfulness, fairness to sources and giving readers the context they need to understand what is going on.

Experience: We are open to hiring someone who has worked in journalism for 30 years or only started a few years ago. Three years is roughly the minimum amount of professional experience we need, but it doesn’t matter if that is at a national newspaper, a local news site or a magazine.

Type of work: This role is mostly remote, although you will spend about a day per week with the editors and writers at The Mill’s office in order to share ideas and plan.

How to apply:

To apply for this role, please email editor@livpost.co.uk ASAP and at the latest by the evening of Saturday, July 31st. Please include the following — all in the body of the email not as attachments:

1. Three or four paragraphs introducing who you are and why you would be a good fit for this role.
2. Five links to stories you have written that show the skills listed above — including both features and news stories.
3. A sample piece of writing for The Post about a recent Merseyside story — something our readers would enjoy reading in their inboxes. It should be about 250w long and can be analysis or reporting or a colour piece.

If you would like to ask questions about the role before applying, please just email editor@livpost.co.uk.

Before applying for this role, please familiarise yourself with our work so far, including our top stories.

Please mention Journo Resources when you apply – it really helps us out.