Computational Journalist A. H. Belo
Dallas, TX

Job Description

The Dallas Morning News is looking for a computational journalist to join its newsroom. The right candidate has a complementary mix of code skills and journalism chops. She or he will help in our emphasis on developing our interactive, graphic and otherwise visual storytelling online while continuing The News' tradition of statistically sophisticated and data-dense accountability journalism.

Our interactives and data team is responsible for both data reporting, analysis and visualization, in addition to developing tools and applications that are both reader and newsroom facing. Essential functions could include:

* Support data-driven and visual journalism across the newsroom by creating compelling and truthful data visualizations and graphics.


* Conceive, develop, test and successfully deploy web applications.


* Effectively manage multiple project development cycles from conception to execution and consistently meet deadlines.


* Work with a wide-range of newsroom personnel, including reporters ,editors and photographers, to develop newsroom tools that help accomplish sound journalism fast and efficiently.


* Write clean code with an emphasis on documentation and open source standards.


* Create or monitor metrics reports and other feedback loops to measure project impact.


* Adhere to (or improve!) corporate usability, design and branding standards.



# of Hires Needed

2

Job Requirements

* At least 1 year experience producing web applications using a modern development framework, such as Django.


* Be proficient with front-end technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Experience with a front-end JavaScript framework is a plus.


* Be proficient in a scripting language (Python's our choice) enough so that you could write a simple Web scraper or use it to clean an unruly data set. Experience with a server-side Web framework, like Django, and cloud-based platforms such as Amazon AWS and Heroku preferred.


* Have experience cleaning complex datasets for analysis and visualization, hopefully within a web-standard database like PostgreSQL.


* Have sound understanding of basic statistical principles. Competence with statistical software like R and dataviz packages like ggplot2 earns bonus points.


* Have experience producing clean code with clear documentation and collaborating on development projects.


* Experience producing open source software is a plus.


* Ability to work closely with other journalists to support reporting projects.