Writer, Beauty & Personal Care, NYT Wirecutter

About the Role

Wirecutter is looking for a staff writer to join our growing beauty and personal care team.  

As a writer on the team, you’ll find the best of the best beauty and personal care products through rigorous testing and reporting. You’ll write in-depth guides across these categories—research-heavy projects that can often take weeks or months to complete—and you’ll also have the opportunity to write shorter stories that complement our guides, like explaining how to choose the best products for someone’s hair type or writing an ode to a serum that’s making the rounds on TikTok. 

You have a firm grasp of the beauty and personal care product landscape—from skincare, haircare and makeup to grooming and oral care—and strong understanding of industry trends, from emerging brands to cult-status standbys. You’re a beauty enthusiast who knows how to apply a skeptic’s eye when reading marketing claims about a beauty product, and while you have a wide array of industry contacts, you also understand the importance of journalistic standards and integrity. You understand that beauty can be an act of self-care as much as it can be a utilitarian effort, and you’re passionate about cutting through the clutter to help people find the right products for their unique situations and thoughtful about making inclusive recommendations.

A successful person in this role will be comfortable collaborating with team members and editors but should also enjoy spending a good portion of time: researching, testing, writing, and responding to edits. As a Wirecutter writer, you’ll also recognize the importance of considering those with different needs and diverse perspectives when writing a guide or other piece of journalism. 

This role is based in New York City.

Responsibilities:

• You will research, report, and write long-form guides and short-form posts; think creatively about sources, identify experts, and plan and conduct meaningful short- and long-term tests
• Request product samples and process their return
• You will call experts and review academic journal articles and other scientific data; methodically scan user reviews and forums to find what matters to readers
• Collaborate with editors to conceive new content and formats and move ideas from pitch to publish     
• Collaborate with photo, video and illustration departments to produce visuals to support guides and short-form articles
• Partner with our discovery and audience teams to identify trends and outside experts worth profiling
• Work with our community team to respond to reader feedback and questions; work with our affiliate team to resolve stock issues on recommendations; work with our operations team on product orders and testing plans 
• You may attend trade shows and product news events to build contacts and expertise in relevant topics
• Perform related work as assigned
• Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.
• You will report to the Editorial Director.

Basic Qualifications:

• 2+ years of professional writing experience and the ability and voice to explain why one product is better than another in a natural, accessible, and detailed way
• You have experience reporting on the beauty and personal care industries
• You have experience working through multiple rounds of edits and balance several reporting projects and deadlines simultaneously
• Knowledge of SEO from an editorial perspective and understanding of how to use web analytics data to make editorial decisions
• Must be comfortable with detailed research that involves gathering large amounts of data, organizing it in spreadsheets, and probing the work for inaccuracies

Preferred Qualifications:

• An inherent skepticism of marketing claims and a commitment to of reporting, accuracy, and ethics

This position is represented by the NewsGuild of NY.

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The New York Times Company is committed to being the world’s best source of independent, reliable and quality journalism. To do so, we embrace a diverse workforce that has a broad range of backgrounds and experiences across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. We encourage people from all  backgrounds to apply.

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