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Call for News Apps Developer/Graphics Freelancers

ProPublica is looking for developer/journalists who are available for projects from now until March of 2020 to help cover for a team member.

What We’re Looking for Help on:

Our team does two types of projects:

• News applications, which are interactive databases that help the public make important decisions in their lives. They’re also always investigative in nature. Some of our largest news apps take a long time to make, but the ones we may need help making in the next couple of months should be able to be done in a month or two. Here are a few examples of the scope and type of work I’m expecting we’d need help with:

  • Bombs in Your Backyard
  • HUD Inspect
  • Facebook Political Ad Collector

Some of these projects involved extensive back-end database work, or data analysis, before we created the public-facing news app. If you have those skills, great! If you don’t, don’t worry. We can also pair you with a developer or editor we have in-house. We’re looking for folks who can do either the front end or back end, or both, on these projects.

• Graphics, which you can think of as storytelling done visually instead of only through text. The work can range from interactive quizzes, to data visualization, to other creative ways to use multimedia and interaction design to tell a story. Here are a few examples of the scope and type of work I’m expecting we’d need help with:

  • How (Not) to Cross the Street in Jacksonville
  • Political Operatives Got Donors to Give Millions. The Money Wasn’t Used As Promised. Here’s How They Did It.
  • Could Your Police Department Be Inflating Rape Clearance Rates?

Additionally, we may need some overall help with:

• Scraping data from websites
• Converting a bunch of different CSVs and putting them into a common schema
• Taking a large data source and turning it into a database

Relevant Skills:

The general skills we’re looking for include any of the following:

• Front-end web design skills (HTML/CSS + Javascript)
• Front-end data visualization skills (D3.js or other libraries)
• Web scraping skills using Python or Ruby, even Selenium
• Data manipulation skills that would allow you to convert one data type to another
• Back-end Rails or Django skills that would allow you to build and deploy an interactive database

We highly prefer that you have experience in journalism. All of our projects will require an editorial eye, and if you’ve never worked in journalism before, the work will be more difficult.

What You Should Send Us:

Your portfolio! Send us examples of work that you’ve done that’s similar to the examples above, and tell us about what you did on those projects.

The application form will allow you to expand on three projects from your portfolio, as well as give you the space to walk us through your own contributions to those projects. Take advantage of this to tell us everything you did, from behind-the-scenes wins you’re proud of to how you helped your colleagues.

Again, do not be discouraged if there are parts of the above example projects you don’t know how to do. Our goal isn’t to find one freelancer to do everything but rather a combination of talented folks to take on projects as they come, and each project will require its own specific skills.

All the Logistics:

Interested? Use this form to let us know you’re interested. If you’ve filled out ProPublica’s general freelancer form before, rest assured, we’ll be reviewing those too. But feel free to also fill out this form if you’d like to expand on your portfolio pieces.

We’ll start looking at portfolios on Oct. 7, and will keep looking on a rolling basis as projects come up.

Again, we’re looking for help from now until March of 2020.

Based on your skill level and experience, we’ll talk about hourly, daily or weekly rates on an individual basis. You can work remotely from anywhere, as long as it would be easy for us to stay in touch from the Eastern time zone.

We are dedicated to improving our newsroom, in part by better reflecting the people we cover. (Here is a breakdown of our own staff.)

We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages, including for our freelancers. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to submit their portfolios, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

Questions? Email [email protected]. Sisi (Hi! 👋🏼) is the editor of our news apps team, and she will most likely be the one editing your work.

No phone calls, please.