YES! Magazine Reporting Fellowship

YES! Magazine seeks a journalist for a one-year, full-time, in-house reporting fellowship based in our Bainbridge Island, Washington, office, near Seattle. The fellow will receive a salary of $40,000, plus vacation and health benefits. This fellowship is designed to support reporters from communities that are often underrepresented in the field of journalism. YES! Magazine established this fellowship to increase diversity in our economic and environmental reporting and writing.

The fellowship offers the opportunity to work with experienced writers, editors, and designers to create character-based, data-driven, solutions-oriented journalism. The fellow will focus on economic and environmental issues, with an emphasis on community economic development. The fellow will research, report, and write articles for our website and print magazine. Online, the fellow will contribute a mix of long and short pieces, with the emphasis on substantial, reported features. In print, the fellow will contribute one article to each quarterly issue.

Main responsibilities include:

Writing regularly for the website. We’re generally looking for thoughtfulness and impact more than daily turnarounds. We’d hope to see about 1 shorter piece (500 – 1,000 words) per week, depending on the week.

One to two substantial, reported pieces (1,500 – 3,000 words) per month for the website and/or print magazine.

Three to four high-investment, long-form pieces throughout the year that may include travel and will be produced collaboratively with the YES editorial team. These pieces may appear in shorter form in print, with a longer, multimedia version online.

Qualifications:

You want to be a great journalist. You’re experienced—you’ve worked as a reporter, either professionally or as an intern or student—and have lots of clips but you want to go further. You’re an excellent writer with a strong voice. You’re enthusiastic about working with editors and want to be challenged.

Curiosity! You’re excited about how our society is changing and love to dive into new ideas.

You come from an underrepresented community and are able to use that experience and background to help us achieve greater breadth, depth, and accuracy in our coverage.

You’re interested in data that tell important stories. You’re a research geek and have been known to stay up way too late comparing databases that track inequality in American cities.

You like to have fun. Hanging out with your team and thinking up ways to visualize trends in public transit policy sounds like a great way to end the work day.

Optimism. You get it that social movements have transformed our societies many times in history, and are excited about what they’re doing right now. You bring that context to the current events you’re covering.

And as a plus: You know something about other media forms. You can shoot photos and video, design graphics, or you’re a budding Javascript coder.

How to apply:

The deadline for applications is June 10, 2015. We’re aiming for a start date of around July 6, but we can be flexible.

Please send a statement of interest, along with a resume, three published writing clips, and a letter of recommendation from an editor, professor, or newsroom adviser. We prefer to receive all materials as a single PDF, sent as an attachment to reportingfellow@yesmagazine.org.

Your statement of interest should include your name, address, race/ethnicity, and answers to the following questions:

Why are you interested in joining the YES! team? (250 words max)

Describe some of the topics and questions you would explore if selected as a fellow. (250 words max)

Pitch two pieces for our Commonomics series, which focuses on inclusive community economic development. One pitch should be for a short, reported piece and the other for an immersive, longform feature. The story ideas should focus on urban economic development and/or ideas that explore how to build a robust local economy that doesn’t destroy the environment. (Each pitch should be 50-100 words)

Tell us in a few sentences what you love to read. What are your favorite websites and magazines? Who are the journalists whose work you follow? (50-100 words)