Wanted: a freelance journalist to help us cover Fingal

Since 2015, we’ve been covering the Dublin City Council area. We publish articles online weekly and in print monthly about the council, housing, planning, transport, arts and more.

Now we’re looking to expand our horizons a bit and start publishing articles regularly about the Fingal County Council area.

So we’re looking for a freelance reporter to join other members of our team who will also be finding, reporting, writing and publishing articles from Fingal.

And, to help us spread the word on the ground – delivering newspapers to cafes or postering (where permitted) stories up in areas we have written about.

We have been approved for grant funding through Journalismfund Europe’s Local Media for Democracy scheme, for a seven-month pilot to see if we can make this a sustainable expansion.

We’re going to spend the next seven months working to build our coverage and readership in Fingal. We hope that, in that time, we’ll gain enough subscribers to make it financially possible to continue that coverage indefinitely.

If you’re interested in doing the type of journalism in Fingal that we’ve been doing these past several years in Dublin city, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re looking for somebody based in or near Fingal and eager to do thoughtful on-the-ground reporting. An ability to come up with fresh ideas of what to cover is also key.

Let us know what part of the Fingal you’d propose to focus on, and what subject areas you’d be most interested in covering.

We will pay €285 for each reported freelance piece that we publish during this pilot. We’re looking for someone who can start in August.

Regular freelancers, those contributing more than 20 pieces a year, are also invited to join our quarterly internal co-op meetings, with a say in the business side of the newspaper and how we develop and grow.

If you’re interested, please send an email by Tuesday 1 August at 7pm to lois@dublininquirer.com, telling us why you would be a good fit, with two story ideas, and two writing samples.