Health Data Reporter

Type: Full-time, 1-year employment contract (renewal possible).

Location: Anywhere. LMA/LMF and all affiliates are virtual organizations. You need reliable Internet access and a commercial airport nearby for occasional travel, once conditions allow.

Open: Rolling start date.

Reports to: Managing Director, Word in Black.

Compensation: $55,000/year plus a competitive benefits package including choice of health plans, 401(k), technology stipend and generous PTO. This is a one-year employment contract that may be renewed depending on funding.

Job Summary: We seek a technically driven, data savvy journalist to analyze, cover, and illuminate health news for Word In Black. The Health Data Reporter is responsible for generating ideas for data-based and driven stories and analysis on a range of health topics and inequities impacting the Black community. The role will create content that’s suitable for visualization and sharing with legacy and new media across the collaborative. The Health Data Reporter will regularly produce data stories on health and inequities; and set up topically relevant education seminars quarterly.

Essence of the job:

From the outset, most of the Reporter’s efforts will focus on these responsibilities:

• Collaborate with Managing Director and, when appropriate, outside designers, to come up with original and engaging ways of visualizing this content
• Produce and write copy, as required, to accompany these visualizations
• Work on the data for output, for print and web, as required by Managing Director
• Plan and execute quantitative analyses — and interpret results — in support of assigned health stories and visualization
• Assist reporters with data brainstorming, acquisition, cleaning, integrity-checking, and analysis
• Validate and spot-check data work done by other journalists on the team
• Wrangle data, including FOIA requests for such data, scraping it, cleaning it, analyzing it, and preparing it for publication
• Keep up on best-in-class statistical tools — and be able to present them to wider stakeholders from a non-statistical background
• Exploring and summarizing data using relational database software
• Use statistical tools to identify significant data trends
• Employ skills and experience to advise on best approaches to data-led storytelling and the development and publication of data-led projects

Required technical skills include: A good understanding of statistics and statistical analysis; a strong grasp of how to clean, parse and query data; a good knowledge of some of the following: spreadsheet software, SQL, Python and R; demonstrable experience of visualizing data, using either tools or scripts; experience of GIS or other mapping software; experience of gathering information from Freedom of Information requests.

Desirable skills include: Knowledge of basic scripting and HTML, as it might pertain to data visualization or data analysis and knowledge of several of the following; Carto, D3, QGIS, Tableau.

Ideal candidate must have: 

• A track record of working remotely and a demonstrated ability to think creatively and entrepreneurially in order to excel and achieve goals
• Experience in healthcare/health/wellness vertical
• Knowledge and understanding of how racism has fostered health care inequities
• Experience working with and reporting on the Black community
• Experience working on data projects and experience doing statistical or data-scientific analysis, either in academia or in another research setting
• Excellent interpersonal skills, solid editorial judgment, and the ability to write quickly and cleanly
• A solid understanding of the tools of data analysis, such as database management systems (SQL Server or PostgreSQL), statistics software (R), Microsoft Excel, etc.
• A bachelor’s degree or comparable experience is required. A degree in journalism or a quantitative field is a plus.

We are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion; diverse candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

It probably won’t work out if:

• You don’t believe there is a relationship between racism and health disparities.
• You are not a team player.
• You have limited experience understanding and visualizing data and statistics.
• You don’t believe that legacy media and digital media can coexist.
• You don’t share the belief that a strong, independent, Black-owned press is vital to a healthy democracy.