About the job

LNP Media Group, Inc. is looking for a creative and curious writer to join our team. The LNP Media Group, Inc. family of print and digital publications, part of Steinman Communications, is the biggest and most influential provider of news in Lancaster County, with a history of 225 years of excellence.
The Trending/Scene reporter, working under the direction of the Life & Culture team leader, is a multimedia journalist who reports and creates relentlessly interesting stories, posts, lists, videos, slideshows and social media campaigns on trends and live events in Lancaster County. The ideal candidate is a visual thinker and an agile writer, with a natural curiosity for trends, who can nimbly switch from alternative story format coverage of an upcoming show to quick-turnaround narratives on trends and personality profiles. This reporter is a curious journalist who loves the thrill of chasing new ideas and experimentation across platforms.

The Trending/Scene Reporter Is Expected To

• Break news in real time about trends, entertainment, food and culture, both for site and social
• Create and maintain reader-friendly listings of events and trends
• Coordinate and identify visual opportunities
• Write compelling enterprise stories on their beat
• Be an expert on the latest on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms to localize for our audience
• Livestream high-viewership moments (and coach colleagues on those opportunities)
• Exercise solid news judgment, a sense of urgency and the highest journalistic standards.
• Regularly curate and aggregate content from other sources and present them with relevance and context for our LancasterOnline audience, with additional commentary and explanation.
• Use Parse.ly and/or other metrics to gauge how well stories perform with our LancasterOnline audience and, working with editors, decide how to improve poor performers or stop writing about topics that perform poorly altogether.
• Reporters for LNP Media Group exercise strong news judgment and news-gathering capabilities to provide up-to-the-minute information across the company’s digital platforms and insightful, contextual and analytical journalism for LNP | LancasterOnline. Reporters are expected to develop authoritative sources in the community, collaborate with other LNP and LancasterOnline journalists and identify stories that are compelling to this community news organization’s audience. Reporters are also expected to meet the demands of a growing digital audience by routinely using social media, shooting photographs and video, and understanding how to post their work using a content-management system.

Reporting

• Organizes materials, determines focus and writes stories according to prescribed editorial style and format standards, both for the newspaper and online.
• Makes use of all available tools to generate accurate, timely and compelling content and may be required to do so with a digital-first mentality; with attention to both detail and deadlines.
• Builds expertise in a particular beat through research, experience and growing a network of relevant contacts in the community.
• Regularly curates and aggregates content from other sources and presents them to our audience with additional commentary or explanation.

Digital & Social Media

• Tracks metrics and conversations on the materials they’ve created to optimize results and shape future work toward that audience.
• Strives to keep our organization at the leading edge of online, mobile and social-network use and innovation.
• Actively builds a social media presence, which includes not just posting content, but also engaging with our audience.
• Thinks visually as well as verbally: Takes photos and shoots/edits video to accompany stories as needed.
• Takes responsibility for his or her own content, in terms of posting it online and subsequently being an aggressive marketer of that content across all relevant platforms.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in journalism, English, mass communications or related field is required, with a proven knowledge and experience working with current media creation tools and contemporary newsroom systems, producing digital and print content, preferred.
• May be required to meet AP writing style, depending on the publication.
• Solid understanding of news writing, journalistic ethics and story structure.
• Must be able to work nights and weekends as necessary.
• Team player who enjoys a fast-paced work environment.
• Wishes to work in a business environment in which every employee seeks to be great every day.