Job Description

The Bay Area News Group -- which operates the Mercury News and East Bay Times in the San Francisco Bay Area -- has an opening for a data reporter to join our growing team and enhance our proud tradition of watchdog journalism. The successful candidate will help lead our data efforts in a very collaborative newsroom, working with reporters, editors and visual journalists on daily, enterprise and project-level work to reveal the untold stories and explain the trends behind everything from the next stage of the pandemic to the most insane housing market on earth. Show us you are as comfortable battling bureaucrats for public records as you are scraping websites and using APIs. Convince us you are both a font of ideas and a phenom at making things happen -- someone who is always looking for answers, not excuses on why things can’t be done. Sounds like you? We're excited to hear your ideas. So send us your resume, four examples of your best data-driven journalism and a cover letter that shows us how your imagination works by describing how you would use a pair of datasets of your choosing to reveal to the world a story that's never been told before.

Essential Functions

We’re looking for an energetic and accomplished journalist who combines exceptional critical thinking skills with a strong foundation in finding data, understanding it, manipulating it, and presenting it in creative ways for a sophisticated Bay Area and Silicon Valley audience.

Applicants should have experience with relational databases and SQL; with organizing, sorting and analyzing data; and with building digital graphics using the latest data visualization tools.

Competencies & Skills

• Excellent news judgment
  

• Strong writing under deadline pressure, for online and print audiences
  

• A fascination and facility with data coupled with the skill and experience to analyze it and seek out new sources of information
  

• Experience juggling multiple stories of varying complexity, from quick news posts and daily news stories to longer-term enterprise and features
  

• At least two years experience as a working journalist

Travel

• 10%

Required Education

• 4-year college degree (journalism or related fields)

Required Experience

• Two years prior experience

Work Environment

• This job operates in a professional office environment and at the Company and client sites for business meetings and presentations. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines.

Physical Demands

• The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear. The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms and requires the ability to occasionally lift office products and supplies up to 30 pounds.

Other Duties

• This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.