Internships - Business

Business Internship

Lookout Santa Cruz
Community & Commerce Team

Internships, 2023-24

Lookout Santa Cruz is a digital media site whose fundamental mission is to serve Santa Cruz County with a new and higher standard of news, information and community engagement. And we’re looking for a smart, savvy, digitally minded intern to help us keep imagining, building and iterating the local news business models that fund a local news revival free of hedge funds.

We now open one position for a business intern to creatively support and advance this important work.

Lookout has begun the local news reboot that communities around this country need now more than ever. Founded by news analyst Ken Doctor in late 2020, its innovation is being watched around the country -- both in its mobile-first local news product and service and in its borrowed-and-scaled-down business model from the New York Times.

The Business Intern will work with Lookout’s Community and Commerce overall team, the group responsible for breaking new ground in mission-directed, community-centered business development. Our team of five strategizes and deploys our earned revenue initiatives across Membership, Marketing Partner Sales and Education.

What you would be doing:

Support Lookout’s business team through outreach, administrative tasks, event help and social media strategies with projects that could include:

Helping with and learning about membership development and retention, including sophisticated analytics work and member-centered events, in alignment with our local journalism.
Tracking and analyzing Lookout’s own KPIs, and those of peer companies, which inform Lookout business decisions and campaigns.
Participating in web management and updating Lookout’s robust online platform.
Supporting production and communication around Lookout events, supporting Lookout’s sales pipeline with creative lead generation.
Finding new and creative ways of showcasing the work of our correspondents and editors utilizing photos, videos and other visual mediums.
Connecting with the community and students to share the work of Lookout through an engaging social media outreach strategy.
Supporting local business marketing partnership and advertising relationship development, and promoted content production.

Student engagement activities at both UCSC and Cabrillo College, actively bringing students into the news of the day and active involvement in their communities.

What we’re looking for:

Someone who wants to learn the business side of a local organization, who has good communication skills and an interest in spreadsheets and data.

A tech-savvy individual to help reach the audience of now and the future, and be sharply focused on that mission — particularly the mobile experience.

A creative problem solver who is solutions oriented. This is critical to Lookout’s culture and plays an important role in our decision-making process.

A detail-oriented team player who enjoys an array of projects. Assignments will range from administrative tasks and digital platform management to event help and social media work.

A self motivated individual with great communication. You have identified the things that drive you — and sometimes wake you up in the middle of the night — and you are planning to go places in this burgeoning new media landscape.

Bonus points for…

Bilingual English/Spanish
Experience working with spreadsheets and data
Have taken business classes, or pursuing a business/economics degree
Experience with analytics tools and key metrics/KPIs
Experience and ideas in TikTok, Facebook and Instagram best practices * Knowledge of web development and production
Familiarity with video production and photo editing

If you’re looking for these things, you should apply:

Experience in a local business, with a variety of tasks
A fast-moving digital media business environment
Learning about digital tools/software that now power digital business operations
Meaningful experience that will build skills and resume
A startup environment where everyone has a voice and helps formulate every part of the business (yes, even interns)
A collaborative, ever-changing work environment where no one day is quite the same

How to apply

Please email a letter explaining why you’re interested in working with Lookout along with a resume with references to these addresses:

internships@lookoutlocal.com
jamie@lookoutlocal.com