| Date Posted | February 19, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Industry | Newspapers |
| Specialty | Other |
| Required Education | Bachelor's Degree |
| Job Status | Full-time |
| Salary | Not Specified |
Description:
The Kansas City Star, winner of nine Pulitzer Prizes, is looking for a vibrant and dynamic journalist to spearhead a new initiative to cover Gen Z life and relationships.
The Star is a dedicated, innovative newsroom determined to build the future of news — by fostering journalists, evolving our news coverage and building bridges within our community. It’s the perfect space for a visionary journalist who can understand and represent Gen Z to help us demonstrate the vitality of local journalism in today’s world.
In this role, you should spend your days talking to Gen Z residents of Kansas City. You should get to know where they live, party, work, date, exercise, eat, socialize, shop and relax.
Tell their stories. Highlight their problems. Reflect the things that matter most to them. Be their guide, their voice and their point of connection with their local community.
Show the rest of Kansas City the way Gen Z works — their culture, their hangouts, their stories — and how this generation is changing the ways so many of us work, socialize and relate to one another.
Of particular interest for coverage is the dating scene for young people in Kansas City and how relationships do and don’t work in this modern age. We want you to tell the stories of people who are actively trying to find connection in 2026 — and the success stories of those who’ve found it.
Inspirational, laughable, gut-wrenching, eye-opening, disheartening, charming, helpful, even just starkly realistic — we want stories that run the gamut and hit the highs and lows of love today.
A successful candidate for this role will bring many of their own ideas, an enthusiasm for all types of storytelling methods and a personality that will make their target audience want to connect with them. We want a journalist who understands that building a loyal audience around a topic requires publishing consistently and often.
This staff member should meet The Star’s high standards for accuracy, fairness and objectivity, and their experience and their work with us may take other forms than traditional news stories — think vertical video, first-person pieces, man-on-the-street interviews, photo or video essays, recurring columns, experiential journalism. We are ready and willing to break the mold for the right person and ideas that will fulfill our mission.
Willingness to be on camera, ability to form fast relationships with sources, and a talent for engaging storytelling are the top qualifications for this role. Existing relationships and/or a following with this audience are a major plus.
You should be able to write and make videos that show your personality, and listen constantly to what Gen Z needs and wants, hates and loves, knows and doesn’t.
With your reporting, you might help other residents of Kansas City understand their younger neighbors better and how the city is and isn’t serving them. You can put issues of affordability, access, social connection, political disenfranchisement and social justice in perspective to help everyone in Kansas City see their home more clearly.
While social media will obviously be a major facet of this role, our ultimate goal is to bring young people onto KansasCity.com and into the fold as loyal consumers. You should be able to balance those needs and create content that works on multiple platforms.
You’ll join a newsroom that is already full of young adults who are building their lives in Kansas City and are deeply passionate about informing their community. You will collaborate with a diverse group of reporters, photographers, video creators, audience strategists and editors to tell these stories and set the tone for The Star’s future engagement with Gen Z.
Kansas City is a vibrant, large city with a high quality of life – replete with iconic professional sports teams and a world-class arts scene – and a low cost of living. It’s a fantastic place to put down roots, and this job offers the chance to contribute to its future.
McClatchy Media’s journalists are expected to take advantage of opportunities to ethically harness and leverage artificial intelligence and other automation to enhance and elevate their work and to find efficiencies that free them to focus on source-building and high-quality, deeply reported journalism.
In this role, you will need to:
- Find, pitch and execute stories that build and engage local readership, especially among young people
- Write with power, verve and personality
- Build a network of sources to find unique stories that inform, delight and engage readers between the ages of 18 and 30 in Kansas City
- Come up with new story ideas constantly to keep the beat lively, innovative and engaging
- Master engaging multimedia storytelling, especially influencer-style vertical video, entertaining interviews and experiential pieces
- Respond in real time to the audience’s needs, conversations and feedback
- Demonstrate strong writing, speed and SEO savvy
- Work well in a team environment, both virtually and in person
- Balance the needs of The Star to reach new readers, engage existing ones and drive loyalty that leads to revenue
The successful candidate should meet many of the following requirements:
- An excellent pulse of what Gen Z needs and wants to hear about
- An ability to foster connections and get comfortable in various social spaces
- Interpersonal and interviewing skills that will help you break down barriers with strangers to find authentic, enlightening stories
- Familiarity with lifestyle journalism or other types of content creation that connect people to their community and culture
- Comfort with writing, video storytelling, social media, photography and research
- College degree or equivalent work experience
- At least 1-3 years of reporting, storytelling or content creation experience
- An innovative, experimental approach to the job that also allows for collaboration and engaging with others’ ideas
- Familiarity with the concepts of news judgments and other journalistic tenets to uphold standards of accuracy, fairness and objectivity
- A knowledge of digital and in-person gathering places for young adults and how to build connections in those spaces
- A demonstrated ability to see the stories that will matter to your audience
- Must have reliable transportation. Must have valid driver’s license and vehicle insurance required (at least minimum insurance required for the state in which the employee works)
- Comfort with a job that will be demanding, fast-paced and constantly evolving as our region grows
What we’ll bring:
As a journalist at McClatchy, you will join a supportive, flexible, collaborative team. McClatchy strives to be an employer of choice, and our benefits package is made with this goal in mind. With a focus on health, well-being, wealth and daily life, our package options include health care coverage for employees and their families, financial protection from expected and unexpected expenses, multiple no-cost wellness resources and even coverage for four-legged friends.
Our overall benefits package also includes a 401(k) with employer match, competitive paid time off and corporate holidays, and a variety of mental health benefits. With an excellent support team and with focus on your well-being as a top corporate strategy, McClatchy provides benefits to support you and your family in achieving your health and wellness goals. For more information on McClatchy's benefit plan, please visit McClatchyLivewell.com.
To apply, include a persuasive cover letter, your resume and four to six examples of your best work.
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