Update (Nov. 17): This position has been filled.

ProPublica offers one distributed reporting/social media internship each spring, summer and fall.

We are hiring immediately for the spring internship. Applications should be sent by the end of October. The position is in NY. There will be the possibility of extending the internship. The internship is full-time, based in New York, and pays $700/week.

The intern will work closely with Amanda Michel, Dir. of Engagement. Applicants should have experience reporting and/or managing volunteers (or online organizing) and a track-record of innovation. The intern will assist Amanda in developing new reporting methods, like building source networks (for which ProPublica received a Special Distinction Award from the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism). They will assist in collaborative reporting projects, such as ProPublica's Super Bowl Blitz and the Stimulus Spot Check. They will also help manage ProPublica's social media presence and e-mail communications. Someone with solid number crunching skills and an affinity for stats/data will make a better candidate.

If you would like to apply, please send a cover letter, your resume and portfolio to amanda.michel@propublica.org.

Kenneth Feinberg, the independent paymaster who is managing the BP claims process, said on Monday that he would no longer consider proximity to the oil spill in determining whether a claim is eligible for payment.

"I have concluded that a geographic test to determine eligibility regarding economic harm due to the oil spill is unwarranted,” Feinberg said in a statement.

Five weeks after taking over the oil spill damage claims from BP, and after widespread criticism of delays in processing applications, claims czar Kenneth Feinberg said his operation had eliminated the backlog of older claims that had been sitting in the system unpaid.

“There is virtually now no backlog,” Feinberg told us this morning. “We are now current with any of the older claims.”

In an unusual rebuke to the White House's hand-picked candidate for managing damage claims from the Gulf oil spill, the associate U.S. attorney general wrote a strongly worded letter to claims czar Kenneth Feinberg describing the pace of his payments as "unacceptable" and demanding that he improve his operation.

"Many of these individuals and businesses simply do not have the resources to get by while they await processing by the Gulf Coast Claims Facility," Associate AG Thomas J. Perrelli wrote on Sept. 17. "As the present pace is unacceptable, the GCCF needs to devote whatever additional resources -- or make whatever administrative changes -- are necessary in order to speed up this process."