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The Marshall Project seeks a deputy data editor to join our growing team dedicated to high-impact reporting on the U.S. criminal justice system, which is not known for having a wealth of quality or consistent data. This position is fully remote and our headquarters is based in New York.
This role will be focused on the ongoing management of reporters working on large-scale investigative stories, editing data-driven stories, working with stakeholders across the organization to bring projects to fruition and leading collaborative tasks like data review.
THE DEPUTY DATA EDITOR WILL BE EXPECTED TO:
First and foremost, be a journalist with formal or informal experience or demonstrated potential for managing and editing large-scale investigative projects and/or impactful editorial products like interactive databases or collaborative data collection.
Have experience reporting, interviewing and researching from a wide variety of sources, including people, documents and databases, with a strong track record of rigor and transparency.
Work with the data team editor to design systems for managing project intake and workload across the team. Document these systems and communicate them with the newsroom.
Manage long-term initiatives, providing editorial support to projects initiated by or supported by the data team and be able to juggle several such projects on a weekly basis.
Edit data-driven stories across the range of scopes we support: including data dives ranging from one to two weeks to year-long investigations, short-form video scripts and occasional newsletters.
Think about the best way to present a story and find viable ways to produce it, whether that includes a look-up, table, photo montage, game or data visuals.
Manage collaborations with colleagues from The Marshall Project and partner organizations across digital, broadcast and print, especially in local markets.
The Marshall Project and the organization’s data team is growing in size, ambition and diversity of projects. To facilitate that growth, we seek a deputy data editor to edit and manage the team’s growing portfolio of projects and staff.
The deputy data editor will be responsible for shepherding collaborative projects on behalf of the data team and for building systems for managing the growing workload. They will be particularly focused on providing ongoing editorial feedback and project management support for investigative projects that can easily take six to 12 months or more to complete. This will include coaching on reporting, interviewing, making public records requests and helping reporters identify and execute opportunities for visuals and interactives.
For smaller projects, like our ongoing coverage of crime stats and expanding profiles on social media platforms like TikTok, the deputy data editor will share the editing workload with the current data team editor.
This is not an entry-level position. Applicants should have some professional experience in data reporting or editing. Candidates should have the highest levels of rigor, skepticism and integrity in using data for journalism. They should have a proven track record of editing, reporting or producing fair, clear and engaging data-driven journalism.
They should also have experience or demonstrated potential in management and/or leadership. This could be formal experience, like running a data reporting or research team, and could also consist of informal experience that demonstrates an ability to step into this role. For example, senior investigative reporters who often act as project managers and editors of their own initiatives.
The deputy data editor should have a strong understanding of data storytelling and conceptual knowledge of common data tools. Specifically, that means familiarity with relational databases like PostgreSQL, the role code plays in data work, interactive notebooks like Observable or Jupyter, and code management systems like GitHub. The deputy data editor does not need to be a software or database engineer or be able to write code themselves.
If the candidate has limited experience reading and writing code, they will need to learn some elementary Javascript and database queries on the job to interact with Observable notebooks and our database tools, which we support through on-the-job training and pair work sessions.
We do not expect every candidate to be equally skilled in all the areas above, and this is not a complete list of all relevant qualifications applicants might bring to the job. Please tell us about your other skills and experience not mentioned here that may be valuable to this role. Reaching talent across a range of backgrounds and experiences is deeply important to us. If you do not meet all the criteria but are still interested in this role and/or in The Marshall Project, we’d love to hear from you.
This position reports to the data editor.
To help candidates assess the kinds of projects we are interested in pursuing and that the deputy data editor would play a crucial role managing, here are some inspirations from The Marshall Project and other news organizations selected by the team:
“No Place for a Child”: This Marshall Project story weaves graphics, illustrations, words and scrolly-telling to investigate conditions in border facilities where migrants are held.
Testify: A long-term Marshall Project investigation of Cleveland’s criminal court system with investigation, explainers, comics, data visualization and more.
The War on Gun Violence Has Failed. And Black Men Are Paying the Price: This project from The Marshall Project goes deep into a major change in policing in Chicago, with significant national implications.
Police Know Arrests Won’t Fix Homelessness. They Keep Making Them Anyway: This project uses data to respond to an urgent and widely debated issue. It illustrates the value in taking a deeper dig into not only topics where there is extreme harm or a gross lack of accountability, but also topics that question whether conventional knowledge within systems is working.
Dying Inside: The Hidden Crisis in America’s Jails: We appreciate the ambition and execution of trying to quantify a dynamic that seems important to track, but is surprisingly difficult to count.
Inside the Suspicion Machine: Dutch reporters teamed up with Wired to investigate the Dutch welfare algorithm that determines who is flagged as likely to commit fraud, which ultimately decides their eligibility for social services. The reporting involved deconstructing the algorithm from contracts and memos, replicating it, and revealing its biases in an interactive story.
Claim File Helper: ProPublica’s recent project relies on a key reporting insight — that people in the U.S. facing an insurance claim denial have the right to request details about the claim file — and turns it into an empowering editorial product.
More than 1,800 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.: The Washington Post’s work on identifying slaveowners in Congress is the perfect marriage of visual storytelling and deep data reporting. We appreciate how its data exploration table links to source material and empowers local reporters to expand their coverage, which are always goals for our data team.
How Many Guns Did Americans Buy Last Month? The Trace launched its gun purchase tracker in 2020, and has been updating it using the FBI’s monthly data. It’s a great demonstration of how data journalists can sprint and run a marathon at the same time, and we’re big fans of developing beat knowledge in different datasets.
Who We Are
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to covering America’s criminal justice system. We have won two Pulitzer Prizes: in 2021 for national reporting and in 2016 for explanatory journalism; we were also a Pulitzer finalist for investigative reporting. We are not advocates—we follow the facts and we do not pander to any audience—but we have a declared mission: to create and sustain a sense of urgency about the criminal justice system. We do not generally cover breaking news (although we curate the reporting of other news outlets in our morning newsletter). Our work includes investigative and explanatory projects and shorter pieces aimed at highlighting stories that other news organizations miss, underestimate or misunderstand. To assure our work reaches a larger audience we partner or co-publish with other media outlets on almost all of our work; we have partnered with more than 100 newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and online sites.
We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to diversity. We welcome qualified applicants of all races, ethnicities, physical abilities, genders and sexual orientations, including people who have been incarcerated or otherwise involved with the criminal justice system.
Compensation and benefits
This job is full-time, with a competitive salary and benefits, including:
Annual Salary Range: $140,000 - $150,000
100% employer-paid and employer-contributed medical, vision and dental insurance options, matching traditional and Roth 401k (immediate vesting), and 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
Voluntary benefits include: Health and Dependent Care FSA, commuter benefits, pet insurance, short and long-term disability insurance, employee and dependent life insurance, AFLAC accident, hospital indemnity and critical illness coverage, legal benefits, personal excess liability insurance, and employee discount marketplace.
Employees receive 15 days of paid time off, plus two personal days. The Marshall Project office is closed between Dec. 24 and Jan 2.
How To Apply
To apply, use this form to answer a short questionnaire related to your interest and qualifications for the job, along with your resume.
Due to the expected volume of applications, we will follow up with the most promising candidates, but cannot respond individually to all applicants. Please know it usually takes us more than a month to review applications.
The deadline to submit an application is 11:59 p.m. Eastern on January 19, 2024.