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The Marshall Project seeks an experienced data and visual journalist to join our growing team dedicated to high impact reporting on criminal justice and immigration enforcement in the United States, two beats not known for having a wealth of quality or consistent data.
Applicants for this senior dataviz position at The Marshall Project must have demonstrated experience reporting, designing and building ambitious visual stories on complicated issues. The successful candidate should be adept at collecting and cleaning data and be comfortable with basic analysis techniques in addition to making graphics, charts and visualizations—both static and interactive. This reporter will work regularly with colleagues across the newsroom to help tell stories visually as well as pursuing their own reported pieces.
A knowledge of criminal justice—policing, prosecution, courts, prisons and jails—and the opportunities (and challenges) of its data is a significant asset.
The job’s primary focus is on conceiving and executing major visual projects, in collaboration with other colleagues, which demand deep reporting, original insight, enterprising data analysis and visual flair. In short, we are looking for revelatory stories and probing analysis told boldly in a variety of formats. From time to time, you will also be called upon to assist with quick-turnaround analysis or visualizations to accompany short stories that provide context about criminal justice issues.
Dataviz journalists here are expected to:
- pitch ideas for original graphics-driven visual stories that engage new audiences and be able to execute them as part of our data and graphics team.
- identify and understand the extant data on the beat, including major new research being undertaken in the area, which can be mined for visualizations.
- collaborate with colleagues from The Marshall Project and partner organizations—print, broadcast and online—especially in local markets.
- design and build charts and data visualizations on deadline, as needed, accurately and with visual sophistication.
Skills we’re seeking
- A thorough understanding of basic chart types and a desire to explore innovative new approaches to visual storytelling
- Mastery of semantic HTML, CSS and Javascript and proficiency with D3, the Javascript visualization library.
- Mastery of the Adobe Creative suite
- Mastery of journalistic data analysis, using database managers and statistical software, ideally with a modern programming language such as R or Python.
- Familiarity with the command line and Git
If you don’t have this exact combination of skills, that’s fine. Tell us what your strengths are, and let us know about other skills you have that we didn’t ask about that you think will help our newsroom’s efforts.
This job reports to the Managing Editor for Digital and Data. Ideally this person would be based in our New York City newsroom, but we are open to strong candidates who would like to work remotely.
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to covering America’s criminal justice system. In 2016, The Marshall Project was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and was a Pulitzer finalist for investigative reporting. We have won two George Polk Awards and two National Magazine Awards. We are not advocates 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 aims to highlight stories that other news organizations miss, underestimate or misunderstand. To assure our work reaches a larger audience, we partner or co-publish with other news outlets on almost all of our work; we have partnered with more than 140 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.