Data Reporting Fellowship

Summary

Join ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, as the David Burnham-TRAC Data Reporting Fellow. This two-year fellowship offers early-career investigative data journalists the opportunity to learn from top reporters and investigate the federal bureaucracy. You will contribute to at least one major investigative project annually, focusing on the federal government. The fellowship involves data wrangling, analysis, and collaboration with other journalists. Successful candidates will possess strong data analysis skills, excellent writing abilities, and a proven track record of insightful data querying. The position is full-time, with a salary of $85,000 per year and benefits.

Requirements

• No more than seven years of professional journalism experience, who is eager to develop their investigative reporting skills
• A proven track record of insightful, skeptical data querying
• Excellent interpersonal skills, solid editorial judgment and the ability to write quickly, cleanly and accurately on deadline
• Experience with scraping, cleaning and analyzing data in your favorite tool of choice, such as Python, SQL or R
• Experience with best practices in data analysis or data journalism, including a keen and careful eye for detail, documentation and version control. Your data work should be clean and reproducible
• Perspectives and life experiences that point to unique stories and untapped potential for holding the powerful accountable
• A desire to work collaboratively with colleagues across the newsroom
• The ability to travel, as needed, for stories, team meetings and trainings

Responsibilities

• Wrangle data, including requesting it, collecting it, analyzing it and preparing it for publication
• Interrogate databases to find trends, patterns and outliers — the stories hidden in the noise
• Develop accountability stories by combining data analysis, interviews and on-the-ground reporting with excellent storytelling
• Collaborate with journalists across the newsroom to produce at least two major investigative projects focused on the federal government during the course of the fellowship
• Bulletproof and spot-check data work done by other journalists in the newsroom
• Work with some of the best reporters on the planet on some of the biggest and most innovative projects in investigative and data journalism

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with using or investigating government data
• Prior journalism experience is a definite plus, but it’s not a requirement. Most important is evidence of a curious, questioning mind

Benefits

The salary for this full-time position is $85,000 per year and includes benefits