ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. This role will be open until at least Oct. 1, 2024.
ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
We’re looking for an engagement reporter to join our unique, award-winning engagement reporting team.
Engagement reporters do ProPublica’s signature crowdsourced investigations, using everything from callouts and tip lines to citizen-fueled science. As an engagement reporter, you’ll team up with colleagues across the country to gather evidence and receipts for hard-hitting, community-driven stories. You may also work with external partners on long- and short-term projects through our Local Reporting Network. You’ll find and reach people who have important stories to tell, figure out how to include them in the reporting process and work on journalism that could help improve their lives. You’ll likely come across more stories and new leads in the process.
Like everyone in our newsroom, our team focuses on accountability journalism and measures success by impact. We’ve worked with communities to tell thousands of people’s stories, including educators, parents, mental health providers, wildfire survivors, migrant dairy farm workers, vulnerable workers and residents living near toxic hotspots. We’ve filled information gaps with calculators, guides and letter generators. And we’ve done our best to reach people in the spaces where they gather, both online and off. This journalism has led to impact big and small, from equipping patients with better information to a promised $2 billion to fix Idaho public school buildings.
What You’ll Do Here:
- Identify promising crowdsourcing opportunities and team up with other reporters to do investigative stories that rely on community outreach and engagement.
- Craft and manage callouts, surveys and other crowdsourcing tools for investigations. Help keep track of ProPublica’s extensive network of respondents to our previous callouts, and help reporters reengage relevant groups as reporting lines arise.
- Research communities and get to know people who live and work in the places we’re covering. Strategize methods to engage sources clearly, effectively and compassionately.
- Listen for, pitch and take the lead on service journalism opportunities, such as tools and guides.
- Review, flag and sometimes follow up on promising tips that come in through ProPublica’s newsroom tip lines. Identify themes and promising angles.
- Develop relationships with long-term community sources, such as union stewards, members of the clergy, Reddit moderators, petition managers and other local leaders.
- Collaborate with national, local and specialty reporting teams across ProPublica and in our many partner newsrooms, including through our Local Reporting Network.
- Brainstorm the biggest ideas you can imagine with a team of the most creative engagement journalists in the country.
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 also have locations in 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 $115,000.
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.
You Should Apply If:
- You have at least 3 years of journalism experience, either in reporting or an engagement-focused role. Most successful engagement reporters come from backgrounds in newsrooms, but we are open to people with skill sets from different industries.
- You’ve worked on stories that shed light on injustices and hold the powerful accountable. You don’t need to have done monthslong investigations, but you do need experience reporting.
- You’ve got a track record of creative outreach. Perhaps you’ve run a Facebook group, optimized headlines for search, built a newsletter list or user-tested an app. Maybe you’ve produced events, A/B tested mass mailers, canvassed neighborhoods or set up a listening post. Online or off, you had a strategy and you adapted it along the way.
- You’re an active, excellent listener and a thoughtful writer who can match your style to the occasion. You understand the difference between messaging the moderator of a Facebook group and emailing a PR person for comment.
- You’ve got a strong news sense, keen attention to detail and the ability to connect the dots in investigations.
- You’ve got the ability to work independently and with teammates on collaborative projects. You like working with others, but you’re also proactive about finding opportunities and pushing projects forward on your own.
- You have the patience and organizational acumen for long-term projects. You probably have opinions about spreadsheets.
- You’re committed to being a decent human being.
We know there may be great candidates reading this who may not fit into what we’ve described, or who have alternative skills — for example, rural community organizers or subreddit mods or town hall note takers — who could bring a lot to this position. There also may be candidates who psych themselves out of applying even if they would be great at this job. If any of that describes you, please don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself.
This role will involve occasional travel for team retreats, conferences and reporting projects.
What you should send us:
Work examples are the most important part of this application.
The application form will require you to send us three projects from your portfolio, and it will give you the space to walk us through your own contributions to those clips. Take advantage of this to tell us everything you did, from behind-the-scenes wins you’re proud of to how you helped your colleagues. Let us know how your engagement and outreach work shaped the output. Don’t be shy — tell us what succeeded, including numbers and evidence of impact, and feel free to share details on how you’d do it differently next time.
Make sure to read the section above, titled “You should apply if,” because it’s also our evaluation criteria for the position. Use your projects and the rest of your application to show us that you’ve got the skills we’ve listed, or why the skills you have are the ones we actually need.
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.
Questions? Send an email to talent@propublica.org.
No phone calls, please.
We know there are great candidates who may not fit into what we’ve described above or who have important skills we haven’t thought of. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself.
We are dedicated to improving our newsroom, in part by better reflecting the people we cover. (Here is a breakdown of our staff.) We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. And we are taking steps to meet that commitment. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. We are an equal opportunity employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age or any other status protected under applicable law.
