[Hiring] Engagement Reporter @ProPublica

Role Description

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
• Residents living near toxic hot spots

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. ProPublica is based in New York, but we’re open to remote candidates. We have offices in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; Phoenix; and Berkeley, California. Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

The expected salary range for this position is $85,000 to $120,000. 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.

Qualifications

• You have at least three years of journalism experience, either in reporting or an engagement-focused role.
• You’ve worked on stories that shed light on injustices and hold the powerful accountable.
• You’ve got a track record of creative outreach.
• You’re an active, excellent listener and a thoughtful writer.
• You’ve got a strong news sense, a keen eye for 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 have the patience and organizational acumen for long-term projects.

Requirements

• 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.
• 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.
• Feel free to share details on how you’d do it differently next time.

Company Description

We are dedicated to improving our newsroom, in part by better reflecting the people we cover. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. 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.