Help Wanted
We have a job opening up on our CAR team here at The Star-Ledger.
I’m not even going to try to compete with Matt Doig’s hilarious and infamous job post, but I will preface this by saying the Ledger is a very good place to work.
We’ve got great journalists here who make a habit of exposing the mind-boggling arrogance, greed, incompetence and corruption of the Garden State’s public officials. One of our colleagues just won a Pulitzer in feature writing for her investigation of the sinking of a small fishing vessel that killed six men. We’re led by top-notch editors who care about writing and about watchdog journalism that gets results. My (relatively) new team is starting to do some cool work, and we have an ambitious agenda for the year ahead.
I’m looking for strong candidates soon. Please pass this along to anyone you think might be qualified. Here’s the job description:
The Star-Ledger is looking for a journalist to fill an entry-level position on its computer-assisted reporting team. The reporter will be responsible for acquiring and analyzing public records and data to support enterprise stories for print and online. He or she should be comfortable filing public records and freedom of information requests with agencies at the local, state and federal levels. The reporter will also contribute to the redesign and maintenance of NJ By The Numbers, our home for databases and statistics vital to New Jersey readers.
Qualifications: A background in local or investigative reporting for a daily news outlet and an affinity for math, web development and programming. Ability to identify and mine public databases for stories large and small and to build and manage relational databases. Experience displaying data graphically in print and online to engage readers.
Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and Access, SQL, HTML and CSS, ESRI ArcView and Google Maps. Bonus points for candidates who have experience or interest in scraping, scripting, frameworks (Django, Rails, ASP.Net) or statistical analysis with SPSS, SAS or R.
If you’re interested, send me a cover letter, resume and clips to my work email, tmeagher(at)starledger(dot)com.