Philadelphia Inquirer
Data Reporter-Developer
Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, PA
Job SummaryThe Inquirer is creating an interdisciplinary team to produce enterprise journalism that is anchored by data. The four-member team will be responsible for generating stories that use computational methods to illuminate the world around us and contextualize the news.
As a Data Reporter/Developer, you'll join a team dedicated to rigorous, data-driven enterprise journalism at the Inquirer. On your own and working collaboratively with others, you'll produce ambitious journalism that proves its claims and tells new stories in new ways. In addition to reporting and writing stories, you'll conceive and execute new ways of telling them online.
We are looking for a hybrid reporter and developer with an interest in the start-to-finish production of ambitious, data-driven journalism that proves its claims.
About Us
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a public benefit corporation owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Together, we're at the center of a critical mission to create a lasting future for ambitious, engaging, and useful local journalism. We're doing this, in part, by deepening our connection with the communities we serve. Our integrated digital and print platforms are the Philadelphia region's largest media network. We're passionate about building a sustainable model for indispensable local journalism, and we take pride in finding diverse, dynamic, and talented individuals to help push our team forward.
What You'll Do
Who We're Looking For
The Philadelphia Inquirer is committed to attracting a diverse group of interested people to join our team, so please err on the side of applying even if you're unsure if you meet all the qualifications. We encourage anyone to apply who shares our passion for indispensable journalism and our drive to create a sustainable business model to support it.
As an equal opportunity employer, The Inquirer is building an inclusive and equitable workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. We especially encourage people from marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds to apply, including people of color, women, people from the LGBTQIA+ community, and people with disabilities.
As a Data Reporter/Developer, you'll join a team dedicated to rigorous, data-driven enterprise journalism at the Inquirer. On your own and working collaboratively with others, you'll produce ambitious journalism that proves its claims and tells new stories in new ways. In addition to reporting and writing stories, you'll conceive and execute new ways of telling them online.
We are looking for a hybrid reporter and developer with an interest in the start-to-finish production of ambitious, data-driven journalism that proves its claims.
About Us
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a public benefit corporation owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Together, we're at the center of a critical mission to create a lasting future for ambitious, engaging, and useful local journalism. We're doing this, in part, by deepening our connection with the communities we serve. Our integrated digital and print platforms are the Philadelphia region's largest media network. We're passionate about building a sustainable model for indispensable local journalism, and we take pride in finding diverse, dynamic, and talented individuals to help push our team forward.
What You'll Do
- You'll help discover stories, analyze data, report stories, create data visualizations, and produce the stories.
- You'll collaborate constantly with reporters and editors from across the newsroom.
- Be involved in regional and national political coverage.
- As a reporter, you will use computational methods of reporting and have a creative eye for looking at stories from new angles.
- When given a large data set, you will know how to extract compelling narratives from within it, and if you have a hunch, you know how to get the data to back it up, even if it means site scraping or PDF parsing.
- You will build interactive tools that use the underlying data to tell a compelling story, with design elements that clarify and summarize your analysis.
- You will be familiar with data, with a front-end web development background (including design, development, and deployment), general back-end knowledge, and experience with a programming language such as R or Python. But you won't have to do everything on your own. You'll have support from a team of designers, news developers and product engineers.
- Contribute to an inclusive and positive work environment.
Who We're Looking For
- Ability to generate creative story ideas.
- Portfolio of data-visualization projects (not necessarily in news publications; corporate work, student projects, and others also qualify).
- Working knowledge of front-end web development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
- Ability to use d3.js or similar JavaScript libraries to produce dynamic, interactive data visualizations.
- Ability to scrap and analyze data, including programmatically (using R, Python, etc.).
- Knowledge of how data presentation can illuminate or obfuscate understanding.
- Attention to detail and excellent written and oral communication skills.
- Ability to meet deadlines and adapt in a daily, unpredictable news environment.
- Demonstrated ability to break out of traditional story formats.
- Ability to programmatically extract structured data from unstructured documents.
- Programming and data are constantly changing, so we value creativity, open-mindedness, critical thinking, and a willingness to learn over expertise in any specific technology. We're interested in what you'll be able to do, not just what you currently know or have previously done.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is committed to attracting a diverse group of interested people to join our team, so please err on the side of applying even if you're unsure if you meet all the qualifications. We encourage anyone to apply who shares our passion for indispensable journalism and our drive to create a sustainable business model to support it.
As an equal opportunity employer, The Inquirer is building an inclusive and equitable workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. We especially encourage people from marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds to apply, including people of color, women, people from the LGBTQIA+ community, and people with disabilities.