Data Fellow

McClatchy’s Washington Bureau seeks recent graduates who are excited to use programmatic skills to help acquire, analyze and visually represent data as part of a team of investigative data reporters.

Join a team that regularly works on investigations of national and international significance. At the Washington Bureau, we put a premium on using data to drive investigations and create visualizations that help readers understand our findings.

We are part of McClatchy, a digitally driven company focused on innovation, with newsrooms in 30 communities in the United States. The team develops its own investigations and works with local newsrooms across the county to help them expand their reporting capabilities.

In the last three years, our team has worked on major international collaborations, including the Pandora Papers and OpenLux, flagged millions in fraudulent paycheck protection program loans and highlighted inequities in the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in Latin America. That work has resulted in numerous national awards including the Scripps Howard Award, the National Headliner Award, Editor and Publisher’s Eppy Award and Best in Business awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.

You would be joining a team based in Washington, DC, but could be based anywhere and the position would give you the opportunity to work with newsrooms across the country.

In our data fellows, we’re seeking versatile and resourceful journalists who are skilled in obtaining and analyzing data in a variety of formats and can help conceive creative ways to put that data to use in text or visually. Most importantly, we’re seeking self-starters who are excited to tackle new challenges and build new skills throughout their time with us.

The anticipated base pay for this position is $21.25/hour. Individual base pay may vary within that range depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, relevant education, department equity, training, geography and local wage and hours laws.

In this role, you will need to:

Have experience with at least one programming language, such as R or Python

Use code to scrape and analyze data

Build custom data visualizations

Be comfortable reporting and writing stories

Work well in a team environment.

Fellows will be overseen by National Data Team Leader Ben Wieder and work in consultation with local newsroom leadership.

The fellowship is scheduled to begin in June, with some flexibility.

Fellows are paid $850 per week, for a total of 25 weeks. After that period, Fellows may be hired as regular, full-time employees, however full-time employment is not guaranteed. Applicants within one year of graduation are eligible.

International students on OPT through June are eligible and will be given full consideration but must be on OPT for the full six month duration of the fellowship term.

Fellows will be eligible for health benefits (medical, dental & vision) on the first day of the month, following 60-days of full-time employment as a Data Fellow. There is no housing stipend and relocation expenses are not covered.

Please submit a very brief cover letter, resume and links or copies of recent work.

Applications should be addressed to McClatchy National Data Team Leader Ben Wieder.

The successful candidate should meet many, though not necessarily all, of the following requirements:

College degree or equivalent work experience

Experience with at least one programming language, such as R or Python

Prior newsroom experience

Unwavering commitment to accurate, ethical journalism.

Ability to work collaboratively to aggressively tackle stories.

Comfort with a job that will be demanding, fast-paced and constantly evolving.

Facility with obtaining public records of all kinds