Sr. Visual Data Journalist

CBS News and Stations is seeking an experienced data journalist and visualization specialist with a track record of illustrating important stories and investigations involving data, public records, open-source intelligence, and traditional and digital sleuthing. You will work with video editors, other visual journalists, data journalists, investigative reporters, and innovative producers, in an environment where important stories are the North Star – stories that help people, make a difference in the communities we serve, reveal injustice and wrongdoing, and hold the powerful to account to find solutions. The right visual data journalist for our team is a journalist first, someone who is as comfortable reporting as working with code, someone who brings the same passion to a simple daily news chart as a sprawling digital interactive or Visual Investigation, and someone who works well with others in a culture committed to collaboration, respect and excellence.

Primary Responsibilities:

Combine artistic sensibility with reporting and programming skills to produce unique and compelling data-visualizations and innovative storytelling on the web, on television and on streaming platforms.
Collaborate with local and national newsrooms, and teammates, on visual storytelling and visuals investigations that make us essential to viewers and set our journalism apart from competitors.
Passion for experimentation and creative boundary-pushing to discover new ways to communicate data and investigative findings visually for broadcast news via 3-d modeling, augmented reality, interactive presentation by reporters on-air, among many other possibilities. Courage to socialize new and inventive ideas.
Clearly and concisely communicate findings from complex data and analyses to reporters, producers, newsroom leaders and the public.
Show commitment to clarity and brevity. See the difference between the need for a simple chart compared to a complicated interactive presentation. Avoid overcomplication that gets in the way of quickly and clearly communicating what is important to viewers.
Acquire and analyze data to reveal and produce original stories and investigations focused on helping people and solving problems.
Work diligently with data journalists, reporters, producers, newsroom leadership and legal counsel to ensure our journalism is fair, accurate and well-documented, and that it meets all CBS News’ standards.
Collaborate, advise and review visualization work of colleagues.
Report, interview, research and develop sources.
Know and effectively use federal and state open records laws.
Relentlessly expand your knowledge of data visualization tools and techniques beyond the traditional. Aggressively pursue training and professional development that helps advance our storytelling.

Minimum Requirements:

5+ years’ experience as a visual data journalist, working in professional newsrooms, including consistent experience with investigations and complex multi-platform projects.
Portfolio demonstrating your use of data visualization tools and programming to show findings of data-driven news stories and investigations to the audience. The work should show an ability to work with a wide range of elements from data and charts to the written word, imagery, video and audio.
Experience producing multiplatform content preferred, especially experience developing stories for video, streaming or broadcast.
Experience with charting platforms such as Datawrapper or Flourish.
Fluency with some modern data analysis, web development, and data visualization tools, including R, Python, Excel, Google Sheets, Illustrator, ai2html, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, D3, and Unreal Engine, among others.
Knowledge of GIS and mapping software platforms essential.
Your published or broadcast work demonstrating your ability to use data and visualization to tell stories that matter will weigh more than which tools you use.
Lead training courses in data journalism and data visualization.
Ability to work independently on deadline and to function as a team leader on data visualization or visual investigation projects.
Should have basic mathematic and statistics familiarity, ability to assess the reliability of data and sources, and organize messy data.
Excellent reading, writing, spelling, grammar and organizational skills.
Voracious news consumer who has developed a diverse information diet that includes broadcast, digital, print and other sources.
Expertise and passion for any of the following topics is helpful: open-source intelligence, visual or forensic investigations, government and political accountability, climate change’s impact on people’s health, finances and quality of life, consumer fraud, public safety, and extreme weather.