Lede: The Lawrence Times is seeking an intern to join our news team for the summer.
Who: We are the best — and only locally owned — news outlet covering the community of Lawrence and Douglas County, Kansas.
We’re a 2-year-old online publication. We value people over profit and power, and individuals over institutions. We have no paywall, because we believe access to essential news and information should not be restricted to people who can afford subscriptions. We are supported by community members who choose to subscribe and local business advertisers.
Although we are mainly seeking student journalists for internships, we would also encourage veteran journalists interested in part-time work to apply. Our ideal candidate wants to do a mix of coverage, from community events to in-depth digging and accountability reporting — to sink your teeth in, and find out what’s really going on in your town.
What: You’ll get real, hands-on experience covering community news. You’ll have a chance to do pretty much everything (with a caveat — we don’t cover sports in a traditional sense).
Specifically over the summer, we’d like to work with candidates who are prepared to help us cover:
• Upcoming city and county budget processes and, more importantly, what they mean for our readers (experience covering local government is a major plus);
• Lawrence’s critical shortage of affordable housing;
• Breaking news and some community events;
• “News you can use”: Creating and updating guides and explainers that will help people understand local issues and advocate for themselves in their daily lives;
• Issues surrounding the school board and city government, as elections approach (there might be an August primary if enough candidates file);
• And whatever other awesome ideas you bring to the table.
Although our main focus is on the written word, we are excited about the prospects of doing more with all kinds of multimedia. If you’re the reporter who’s going to help us launch the Lawrence Times Podcast, great! If you want to create awesome content for our TikTok, we would love that. (Just a couple examples.) We want you to be creative.
When: Start and end dates for this internship are flexible, but ideally, we would like candidates to start by Monday, May 22, 2023, and continue work through — or possibly beyond — Friday, August 11, 2023.
Yes, you will probably be asked to do some work on evenings and/or weekends, but other members of our team often do, too.
Where: Ideal candidates will be in or near Lawrence. A key role that we would like interns to fill will involve getting out to community events, both planned and unplanned.
The vast majority of your work will be remote because we don’t have a newsroom (we prefer to pay people instead of rent).
Why: Because we will pay you well, you will learn a lot from our talented news team, we want to learn from you, and you will get to do real journalism that makes a difference in this community. You will leave this role with a stacked, impressive and diverse portfolio. And we’ll be happy to work with your college/university to get you class credit, too.
Drawbacks: Unfortunately, although we are small and scrappy, we are small. We don’t have any positions with more than 30 hours per week available at this time, and we can’t provide housing. We also really need candidates to have reliable transportation because of the fast-paced nature of this work. We recognize and regret that this could be a limiting factor for some incredibly talented candidates. If that’s you, we still want to hear from you.
Some very good things: Although we don’t have an in-person newsroom, we do have a tight-knit virtual newsroom (in Slack) and we can set up meetings anytime. • There’s a lot of room for collaboration and teamwork, but you’re also welcome to work independently. • We’re excited to try nontraditional storytelling methods and broaden multimedia approaches, where we see limitless potential. • This is a generally upbeat environment where you will get to hone and flex your skills. • We practice compassionate journalism and prioritize voices that have been silenced. • We’re delightfully flexible. • We work to foster a culture where all journalists can grow and thrive. • We report the truth fearlessly. • Your family/friends won’t have to subscribe to read your work, since we don’t have a paywall.
How: Interested in applying? Yay! Please apply at lawrenceks.news/LTjobapp23.
Learn more about who we are and what we do on our About page. Questions? Shoot us an email at hello (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com.
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