K-12 Education Reporter: Early education, Literacy and STEM

The Houston Landing is looking for individuals to add to our team of passionate people on a mission to advance democracy in our communities and strengthen the lives of all Houstonians one story at a time. Houston Landing is an independent, nonpartisan news organization devoted to public service journalism. Initially supported by three of Houston’s leading philanthropies including Arnold Ventures, The Houston Endowment, and the Kinder Foundation, we are building a team to support our efforts in sustainability and revenue growth. Houston Landing is seeking an enterprising journalist to report on three all-important education topics: early education, literacy and STEM. 

This is a new position created as part of the Landing’s expansion of its education team, which will feature five reporters, an editor focused solely on education coverage and an audience engagement producer embedded within the team. Compensation is commensurate with experience, with a minimum salary of $70,000.

This position offers a unique opportunity to take a regional, student-focused approach to the most consequential topics affecting the children of Houston. We believe there’s enough coverage of school boards, superintendents and politics. And we believe there’s not enough attention paid to the most elemental pieces of a child’s education. Our creation of this position is driven by three comments we repeatedly hear from local education and business leaders:

• There aren’t enough affordable early education opportunities for children, which exacerbates achievement gaps and class divides.
• Not enough students can read on grade level by the all-important third grade.
• Too few students have the math and science skills needed to secure high-paying jobs in the local workforce.

To that end, we are interested in stories that:

• Explore barriers to early education access, hold local leaders accountable for delivering high-quality early education curriculum and provide coverage that drives solutions for improving the early education landscape. 
• Help families understand what’s happening in their child’s reading, writing, math and science classrooms across the Greater Houston region.
• Hold local leaders accountable ensuring their students are attaining the reading and STEM skills, particularly in the early grades, needed to ultimately excel in the workforce.
• Provide families with the tools and information they need to obtain the best possible education for their children.
• Reach our target audiences on their preferred platforms, including social media and other nontraditional channels.

This position does not involve dedicated coverage of specific school districts. Rather, it involves telling stories through a regional lens or focusing on interesting stories from across the region’s 100 traditional public and charter school districts. We likely will place specific emphasis on our larger districts, and this reporter will collaborate on occasion with our two reporters dedicated to beat coverage of five large Houston-area districts. 

We envision this as a position that primarily involves enterprise and investigative work, with some daily beat coverage. We recognize this is a nontraditional education reporting beat. That’s why we’re seeking an imaginative, inquisitive journalist who embraces the challenge of carving out an important niche — with the ultimate goal of creating impact and driving the conversation in Houston’s vast education landscape.

Requirements

What we seek:

We encourage all interested applicants to apply. Each of the following skills is preferred, though not all are required.

• Experience cultivating strong source relationships with community members in coverage areas, as well as those in higher echelons of power.
• Strong writing, with an emphasis on clarity, context and brevity that respects the time of readers and viewers.
• Multimedia skills that demonstrate an ability to take pictures, shoot video and leverage social platforms to expand the reach of the story. 
• A collaborative spirit that fits the Houston Landing. We work closely across news teams and with our audience, visual marketing and product teams to create the best possible package for our audience.
• Experience with computer-assisted and data reporting. Our state and federal government publish extensive data that can lead to fantastic stories.
• Experience covering education is beneficial, but we are ultimately seeking a reporter who will approach the position with a fresh, open-minded, audience-first perspective.
• A multilingual reporter is preferred, with fluency in Spanish, Mandarin or Vietnamese.

Required:

• You have a valid driver's license, insurance, and vehicle.

This reporter will report to Team Leader Jacob Carpenter, an experienced education journalist who has been a finalist for the IRE, National Headliner and Livingston awards. The reporter will also collaborate closely with the audience engagement producer, developing strategies for creating and distributing content that reaches our target audiences. In addition to our two reporters covering five school districts, our general assignment education reporter will be available to assist on occasion with covering breaking news, creating explainers and guides, and helping with other day-to-day coverage.

Benefits

Our Values

EXCELLENCE: We wake up every day with the intent to be the best at what we do. We hustle. We have grit. When we make mistakes, we quickly correct and learn from them.

INCLUSION: We aren’t all the same, and those differences are what make us better. We’ll respect each person’s uniqueness. Perspective, context and life experiences help us to tell the story.

AMBITION: We will be bold and creative, open to all ideas big or small. We really mean it.

FUN: We are not making widgets, although there is nothing wrong with widgets. We tell stories - and stories are often fun, so we believe in having lots of fun.

COLLABORATION: We are all in this together. We may not always agree, but we will listen to each other and communicate candidly and respectfully.

Benefits

• Compensation commensurate with experience, minimum of $70,000
• 401(k)
• Healthcare 100% premium paid for employee and 50% for dependents
• 20 vacation days
• Ten sick days
• Generous paid parental leave
• Hybrid work policy (initially we all work together to build culture)
• Stipend for development / learning

We’re committed to building an inclusive organization that represents the people and communities we serve. We encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, veterans, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities.