Data Journalist

If you’re a passionate journalist who eats data for breakfast and loves visualizing stories in new and innovative ways, we might have the perfect job for you: Data Journalist at CalMatters. 

Why you? You are, at heart, an enterprising reporter who believes our society and democracy work better when people know and understand how policy, politics and government work. You know the power of original data, compelling interactives and beautiful graphics in storytelling. 

You pitch and report your own ideas while partnering with other journalists to explore, understand and explain theirs. You build fancy tools that help reporters and readers understand complex topics and large data sets, but you also know when a quick, simple solution is the best approach. You create compelling graphics and know modern HTML, CSS and Javascript. And you’re proficient with, or eager to learn, more advanced tools and languages. 

In four years, CalMatters has become the largest newsroom covering California policy and politics. We’re a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, and we give our coverage at no cost to more than 180 media outlets in California. With you on the team, our journalism will be deeper and more impactful and will reach more people.  

This position is based in our Sacramento newsroom. 

Responsibilities include: 

• Partner with reporters and editors on their ideas and yours — ranging from quick dailies to long-term projects —  to identify, capture and analyze data that brings stories to life. 
• Build visualizations that explain complex policy topics to the 40 million people who call California home. 
• Build a data store of information that’s relevant to the wide range of issues we cover, with the tools that let our journalists and readers explore and understand the data. 
• Become an expert on quality sources of data about California demographics, governance, policy and finances in important coverage areas like education, health care, environment and housing. 
• Develop relationships with other newsrooms, academic programs, researchers and analysts to make sure we’re engaged in the right statewide and national conversations about doing great data journalism. 
• Encourage and exemplify a culture of innovation in storytelling.

We are an expanding and collaborative newsroom, successfully forging a new model for sustainable, intelligent, nonprofit journalism. We’re committed to diversity and especially encourage members of underrepresented communities to apply. If you’re interested, please provide a resume, a cover letter that outlines how you would approach the job and links to at least six online samples of your work. Write to [email protected] with the job title in the subject line. You can view the posting on our website: https://calmatters.org/about/jobs/data-journalist/