The Post and Courier, the premier news source for South Carolina, is seeking an energetic, driven reporter to join our award-winning Rising Waters Lab.
The Rising Waters team, composed of two reporters and an editor, focuses primarily on mounting threats from rising seas and other climate-driven impacts along coastal South Carolina, with a particular emphasis on Charleston and the Lowcountry. The team also reports news from other regions in the state as needed.
Our ambitious coverage is deeply connected to the people whose lives are being shaped in immediate and long-term ways by climate change. Flooding, hurricanes and other threats are becoming a more common and a grave concern for coastal residents. Inland residents are not immune, as we saw in 2024 with the deadly march of Helene across the Carolinas.
Our Rising Waters coverage has included stories on the tensions over development vs. preservation in fast-growing South Carolina, threatened marshes (and the impact on coastal resilience), and increasingly flood-prone communities and river systems. In 2021, we sent a reporting team to Greenland to explore the impact of melting glaciers on South Carolina’s coastal flooding. And in 2023, we dispatched a team to African to document how seasonal Saharan dust storms influence hurricane formation.
If you are creative, write with skill and force and know how to translate science into stories that don’t bore, then you have the starting point for what we’re seeking in this role. You must be able to produce a steady flow of quick-turn enterprise stories, with daily coverage of in-the-moment news when needed, and be able to work with your team to develop enterprise stories and long-range projects. We want high-impact, ambitious journalism.
Day-to-day reporting duties include writing stories about flooding, infrastructure challenges, resiliency and sustainability and their obstacles, green architecture and design, habitat loss, impacts on endangered species, and conservation efforts. As noted, stories should emphasize human experiences, showing the connections between climate change and the way people live.
We look for journalists who bring passion to their work – team players who are eager to collaborate. Know that metrics matter in a journalist’s work. You must embrace the importance of creating high-quality content that attracts, grows and retains a digital audience.
The Rising Waters Lab is funded through our Public Service and Investigative fund, a nonprofit arm of The Post and Courier that is supported by donations from readers and large and small endowments funds.
If you’re hired, you will join an ambitious, Pulitzer Prize-winning environment where talented journalists have the opportunity to produce the best work of their careers.
The Post and Courier is privately held and is investing in journalism. We began expanding across the state in 2020, seeking to fill a void in news deserts or areas where local news coverage had withered. We are anchored in scenic Charleston but now operate Post and Courier newsrooms in multiple South Carolina cities.
We are passionate, dedicated journalists and seek someone who shares our commitment to excellence.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
- Digital skills: Must work effectively in a digital-focused news operation and have a clear grasp of SEO tactics and an eagerness to promote work on social platforms and elsewhere.
- Accuracy and ethics:Â Produces work that is compelling, accurate and fair. Understands libel and privacy issues.
- Communication: Works well with editors and reporters across disciplines. Discusses original and assigned story ideas. Participates in brainstorming sessions to develop detailed and realistic story ideas. Participates in public events that engage audiences with the issues we cover.
- Organizational skills: Develops a systematic approach to managing a beat and meeting deadlines.
- Creative mindset: Generates engaging story ideas and varied approaches to telling stories outside of narrative or explanatory storytelling.
- Flexibility:Â Reacts to change productively and handles other duties as assigned.
