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ProPublica Is Hiring a Senior Research Fellow

You’ll team up with reporters and editors to do the kind of deep digging required to put out rigorous, powerful investigations.

ProPublica is looking for a top-notch senior research fellow to work in one of America’s most innovative newsrooms. You’ll team up with reporters and editors to do the kind of deep digging required to put out rigorous, powerful investigations.

What you would do:

You’ll team up with reporters and editors to plot out the best way to find everything that is needed for a story. This could run the gamut from filing a FOIA request to tracking down a difficult-to-find source.

You’ll collaborate across the ProPublica newsroom and with publishing partners on projects that can take a variety of forms, from newspaper-style take-outs to magazine, radio and TV pieces, often accompanied by groundbreaking interactive databases.

You’ll work on newsroom-wide initiatives to enhance and improve our investigations, by finding databases to help flesh out ongoing projects to creating our own in-house files and trackers for our accountability journalism.

We’re looking for someone who has:

  • Advanced skills in using public records databases to ferret out facts. Being able to search Nexis or PACER is great, but what we want is somebody who’s eager to dig even deeper
  • The ability to track down people who are hard to find and background them accordingly
  • Experience with the Freedom of Information Act and state open-records requests and laws, and who knows how to negotiate to get datasets and documents
  • A sense of fun and a willingness to take risks
  • A demonstrated commitment to collegiality and collaboration.

Most importantly, though, we want to hire journalists who bring a diversity of experiences, talents and viewpoints to their work. So, if you don’t think you can check off every box on the list above but are confident you can contribute to our efforts, please don’t hesitate to apply.

What you should send us:

The most important part by far is your past work. Send us URLs to your best stuff that you’ve worked on. Let us know how your research and reporting shaped and improved the stories you send. Don’t be shy — tell us what worked (numbers and evidence of impact welcome) and how you’d do it differently next time. And send us your resume.

Research is about far more than digging up documents and data. It’s about putting that material into meaningful context. Show us how you think. Lay out a research-heavy project you think ProPublica should do and tell us how you would approach guiding that project. What might specific stories be? How would you find the information needed to tell this story? Be expansive: Are these narratives, hard news stories, immersive interactives, etc.?

Please use this form to apply. If you have any questions, email us at [email protected].

This job will be based in New York. Pay is $800 per week plus benefits. The job will run through 2017.

ProPublica is dedicated to improving our newsroom, in part by better reflecting the people we cover. Therefore, ProPublica is committed to diversity and especially encourages members of underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities.

The deadline for applying is May 12.

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