Data Reporter/ Developer

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.

Summary:

You’ll join a team dedicated to rigorous, data-driven enterprise journalism at The Philadelphia 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.

What You’ll Do

You’ll join an interdisciplinary team at the Inquirer, built to produce enterprise journalism anchored by data. The three-member team is responsible for generating stories that use computational methods to illuminate the world around us and contextualize the news.

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. That means you’ll help discover stories, analyze data, report stories, create data visualizations, and produce the stories. Because we’ll work constantly with reporters and editors from across the newsroom, you’ll need a demonstrated desire to collaborate.

This position will focus on three primary objectives:

Developing rigorous, data-driven enterprise journalism, with a strong focus on municipal accountability, understanding the electorate and evaluating government policy and effectiveness.
Creating service-oriented data tools and products that enable Inquirer readers to explore public data and better understand and navigate public policy.
Building internal databases (e.g. campaign finance, property records, court records) and tooling that enable reporters to authoritatively and efficiently add depth and context to daily stories and quick-turn enterprise.

We’re looking for someone 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.

Don’t think you need to have every skill listed. 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.

What 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, JS)
Ability to use d3.js or similar JavaScript libraries to produce dynamic, interactive data visualizations
Ability to clean and analyze data, including programmatically (using R, Python, etc.)
Knowledge of how data presentation can illuminate or obfuscate understanding
Passion for rigorous journalism that proves its facts
Attention to detail and excellent written and oral communication skills
Ability to meet deadlines and adapt in a daily, unpredictable news environment
Ability to learn new tools and skills quickly

Helpful skills

Familiarity with cartography and general GIS skills
Demonstrated ability to break out of traditional story formats
Ability to programmatically extract structured data from unstructured documents
Working knowledge of scripting languages (and related web frameworks)

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.