Research Reporter

Job Description

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. This posting will be open until at least Oct. 1, 2024. 

ProPublica is looking for an experienced research reporter to help us uncover documents, data and sources for hard-hitting investigative projects. You’ll team up with reporters and editors to do the kind of deep digging required to put out rigorous, powerful investigations.

Research reporters work as part of a highly collaborative team that partners with ProPublica reporters and editors and with the engagement, news applications, data, visuals and audience teams, as well as with other publishing partners, to cover a range of topics, and may also work with external partners on long- and short-term projects through the Local Reporting Network. 

What you would be doing:

• Collaborating with sustainability desk colleagues and local partner newsrooms to execute stories that have great local significance and strong national resonance.
• Appraising story viability from a research perspective, communicating potential research paths or pitfalls, and helping to assess the national context for select local stories. 
• Conducting broad news searches and academic or archival research.
• Conducting background research on people, companies, organizations or topics.
• Creating original datasets from publicly available data.
• Assisting reporters with best practices for using research tools and methods.

We’re looking for someone who has:

• At least three years’ experience working as part of a collaborative group in a researcher or investigative reporter role.
• Excellent news sense, keen attention to detail and the ability to connect the dots in investigations.
• Experience with juggling multiple projects and many responsibilities at once
• Experience and comfort working collaboratively with distributed colleagues across the country. 
• Ability to prioritize in a dynamic, multiproject team environment. You should be able to meet deadlines and handle pressure while remaining calm. 
• Strong organizational, analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability to search legal resources such as PACER, CourtLink, Westlaw and local court systems.
• Demonstrated ability to use aggregated public records such as Nexis, TLO, Accurint, Ancestry or Pipl, and news sources such as Bloomberg, Factiva or NewsBank.
• Facility searching social media.
• Ability to review large document sets and extract relevant information with accuracy.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to synthesize information for others is a must.
• Expertise in identifying, obtaining, searching and deciphering public records. Ability to file targeted, fruitful FOIA requests is a must.
• Strong understanding of government documents, agencies and processes at the federal and local levels.
• Available for occasional travel for staff retreats, reporting assignments or other required events.

This job is full time and includes benefits. (Read more about ProPublica’s benefits.) ProPublica is based in New York, but we’re open to remote candidates. We have locations in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; Austin, Texas; Phoenix; and Berkeley, California. Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

The expected salary range for this position is $80,000 to $100,000.

This is a good-faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps.

We will begin reviewing applications as we receive them, but we will continue to consider candidates as long as the posting remains live on our site, through at least Oct. 1.

Questions? Send an email to talent@propublica.org. 

No phone calls, please.

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