Senior Editor, Local Reporting Network

Job Description

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. This role will be open until at least Oct. 1, 2024.  

ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network is helping local and regional news organizations produce the kind of accountability reporting that is so vital to our democracy. In early 2025, we will launch a new effort to allow us to better work with former LRN partners and their newsrooms after their project ends. The new sustainability desk will focus on investigative collaborations, providing trainings to former partner newsrooms and sharing local or regional tips.

We’re hiring a senior editor to helm our sustainability desk and help former LRN partners continue to do impactful investigative journalism. The editor will stay in dialogue with former partners, edit a range of stories and projects, and develop trainings and projects for future rounds of the LRN. As with all our work at ProPublica, the job is ultimately to create compelling investigations that spur change.

The collaborative projects with our LRN partners have garnered the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the George Polk Award, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, National Magazine Awards and top prizes from organizations such as Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Online News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

What you would be doing:

• Developing and executing projects with former LRN members that have high local importance and strong national resonance. 
• Working in collaboration with partner newsrooms to produce stories that can take a variety of forms, from newspaper-style takeouts to magazine, audio and video pieces.
• Supervising the reporting and writing of those pieces by reporters in local newsrooms.
• Coordinating with a team at ProPublica that includes research, data, news applications, engagement, audience development and design to elevate these stories.
• Coaching journalists who range in experience from veteran investigative reporters who have tackled big subjects to newer journalists working on their first large-scale investigations.
• Developing trainings and other resources to share with our LRN community in order to continue to strengthen local investigative journalism. 

We’re looking for someone who has:

• At least five years experience managing or leading complex investigations as a reporter or editor.
• Excellent news sense: We need an editor who will recognize a range of stories that will work for both local and national audiences outside of an ongoing project.
• The editing range to handle and think creatively about different types of investigative storytelling, including rolling investigations, traditional investigative projects, narratives and multimedia formats.
• Experience reporting or editing collaborative projects and a command of the communication and diplomacy skills necessary to center building consensus and meeting the needs of different audiences. 
• Experience juggling multiple projects and many responsibilities at once. Strong organizational skills are a must.
• The ability to meet deadlines and handle pressure while remaining calm.
• The bedside manner to help reporters land what is often the most challenging work of their career.
• Interest in and experience teaching reporters about fact-checking, organization, interviewing and other journalism skills.
• The ability for occasional travel to staff retreats, to meet with reporters or to other required events.

This job is full time and includes benefits. (Read more about ProPublica’s benefits.) ProPublica is based in New York City, but remote applicants anywhere in the U.S. are welcome. For those who prefer working in person, 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 $150,000 to $195,000. 

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.

What you should send us:

• Two links to your best stuff and tell us the backstory. The most important part of your application is your past work. We’re specifically interested in how your editing shaped and improved the stories; any challenges you navigated in the reporting or editing of the story/project and what you learned from the experience. Editing is about far more than moving around words: Show us how you think and interact with reporting and reporters. You don’t have to summarize the story itself; we’re interested in the role you played in it. 
• A third link to a story you worked on that involved local reporting and share what that experience told you about how local reporting differs from national stories.
• A few paragraphs recounting a time when your reporter was really stuck and how you were able to help them move forward.
• Your reflections on what, in your role as editor, you identify as your superpower and as your Achilles’ heel.
• Your resume.

We will begin reviewing applications as we receive them and will continue to consider candidates as long as the posting remains live on our site, through at least Oct. 1.

Questions? Send an email to talent@propublica.org.

No phone calls, please.

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