The Mill is hiring a staff writer in Greater Manchester

For almost five months now we have been sending out stories to an ever-growing list of readers in Greater Manchester and tonight, for the first time, we are sending out a job ad!

We are looking for The Mill’s first staff writer. It’s a sign of our rapid progress that we are able to do this already. Making this hire will give us more reporting firepower and will represent our next big step towards assembling a high-quality editorial team for the long-term.

If you know someone who has the skill and passion to produce award-winning, agenda-setting reporting on Greater Manchester and who believes in our mission to bring about a renaissance in local journalism, please direct them to this post. This is an opportunity to work for one of the fastest-growing and most exciting news startups in the country - so please help us spread the word.

If you are a potential applicant but you don’t know The Mill well, please read our About page here and some of our top stories here before applying.

Staff Writer, The Mill

Location: Greater Manchester. The role is remote because we don’t have an office at this stage, but you need to be in GM or able to move here. If you grew up here or know the area well that’s a bonus but definitely not a requirement.

Start date: Ideally December or January, but this is open to discussion.

Full/part-time: We are open to having someone three days a week, four days a week or full time - so people in full-time jobs and people who have other freelance commitments should all apply.

Pay: This will depend on whether the role is full-time or part-time and also on the experience of the applicant and therefore how much work they are able to take responsibility for.

Job description: Being a staff writer for The Mill will be an extremely varied role. The main work will be reporting, but the job will also sometimes include commissioning, editing, speaking to our members, posting on social media and helping to grow our brand and readership. You will be:

• Producing high-quality reporting for The Mill, including reports from council meetings, human features, Covid-19 data stories, political analysis posts and interviews with business and cultural figures.

• Writing long-form stories and investigations that require significant forward-planning and complex reporting.

• Commissioning and editing great stories from our network of freelance contributors.

• Helping to grow The Mill by posting on social media, helping with our marketing and working with our community of members.

Skills required: This role requires an extremely talented all-rounder - a great writer who is also very good at news and can break big stories. It’s also suited to someone who has varied interests and will enjoy writing about an orchestra one day and crime the next. Our focus will always be on producing low volumes of insightful stories, so you need to be good with depth and nuance. You will be:

• A great writer who has a good, clear prose style. You will have a strong feel for the rhythm and structure of news features and won’t use awkward news cliches.

• A skilled news reporter who has a good news sense, knows how to get hold of information and is good at building sources.

• A top editorial operator who knows what kinds of stories people will find interesting and works well with other journalists.

• Someone who is committed to The Mill’s key news principles: accuracy, fairness to sources and giving readers the context they need to understand a story.

Experience: We are open to hiring someone who has worked in journalism for 30 years or only started a few years ago. Three years is roughly the minimum amount of professional experience we need, but it doesn’t matter if that is at a national newspaper, a local news site or a magazine.

A scene from The Mill’s future newsroom, in which stories will be filed on floppy discs

How to apply

To apply for this role, please email [email protected] ASAP and at the latest by the evening of Wednesday, December 9th (we will fill the role if we find someone suitable before this date, so don’t delay). Please include the following - all in the body of the email not as attachments:

1. Three or four paragraphs introducing who you are and why you would be a good fit for this role.

2. Five links to stories you have written that show the skills listed above - including both features and news stories.

3. A sample piece of writing for The Mill about a recent Greater Manchester story - something our readers would enjoy reading in a newsletter. It should be about 300w long and can be analysis or reporting or a colour piece about something that’s happened in GM. Read some of our top stories first if that helps.

If you would like to ask questions about the role before applying, you can do so using the same email.