Investigative reporter

Asheville Watchdog is looking to hire a skilled investigative reporter to join our award-winning team in western North Carolina.

We’re looking for an ambitious, experienced reporter who can produce a mix of short-term and long-term accountability and investigative journalism — someone who can build sources quickly, is equally comfortable with shoe-leather reporting and using data and public records, and who writes cleanly. We’re a small, highly collaborative team, so the successful candidate must have a record of working well with others.

This person will join a dynamic, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to inform and engage the citizens of Asheville and surrounding communities by providing fair, factual, and trustworthy in-depth news stories about local government, institutions, issues, and people. We’re renowned for producing high-impact work and collectively our reporters and editors have won multiple Pulitzer Prizes and other national awards throughout their careers. Since we launched our site in early 2020, we’ve consistently punched above our weight and expect our next hire to help build on that legacy.

The position is based in Asheville, renowned for its art and food scene, craft breweries and outdoor activities in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. We offer a competitive salary, a generous mix of paid time off plus all federal holidays, and a stipend for health insurance. We expect our reporter to be comfortable working remotely as we don’t have a physical newsroom.

We expect the reporter to:

-Produce a steady stream of high-impact stories that hold power to account
-Generate a lengthy and ever-evolving list of investigative stories
-Identify and secure public records to drive reporting
-Collect and analyze data to report exclusive, high-impact stories
-Collaborate with other investigative reporters on individual stories and longer-term projects
-Bulletproof stories before publication

The ideal candidate will have:

-A bachelor’s degree or commensurate work experience
-Three to five years of reporting experience, with an emphasis on investigative and accountability journalism
-Experience collecting and analyzing data
-Aptitude with public record-based analysis and reporting
-Excellent writing skills
-A thorough understanding of journalism ethics
-Experience shooting video and photos is a plus