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I strongly considered going the route of journalist-developer after graduation but couldn't really get any information. Seemed like all the opportunities were w

I strongly considered going the route of journalist-developer after graduation but couldn't really get any information. Seemed like all the opportunities were with Buzzfeed and their ilk and while they may occasionally flirt with good journalism overall I'd rather work for BigCorp. Still I think I'd love to do this kind of work. Anyone have details about pay or places hiring?

showerst 12y ago
NYT is the big guy in the space but there's actually a lot of action right now, with the Post, Vox, and some big traditional organizations like AP doubling down on it over the past few years. Pay is generally in the 'low for a professional developer but reasonable' zone. The hours and work environments tend to be rough, as the news makes its own hours and the media industry in general doesn't have the experience with good project/product management that you'd expect at a tech company. On the other hand the work is super cool, and it's always fun to see your projects exposed to millions of people. There's also a very guerrilla spirit among the journo tech people that I've met that's really fun to be around. As projects are often time-sensitive one-offs, there's also a lot more experimentation with new tech than you'll find elsewhere. If you're interested in the field look at the stuff Nicar and the Knight Foundation do, and look to see if your town has a local hackshackers meetup group.
- dcole2929 12y ago
  I'm definitely going to look into this now. I did some work for a journalism class that was funded by the Knight Foundation so not sure why it never occurred to me to look into them further. Thanks
  - showerst 12y ago
    No prob. Not sure what your exact skills are but anybody with even basic data scraping/munging/analysis skills, and any data visualization stuff (especially d3 knowledge) is super employable valuable right now. There probably aren't that many spots in raw numbers, but I think the right candidate wouldn't have too hard a time getting picked up somewhere.

showerst 12y ago

NYT is the big guy in the space but there's actually a lot of action right now, with the Post, Vox, and some big traditional organizations like AP doubling down on it over the past few years. Pay is generally in the 'low for a professional developer but reasonable' zone. The hours and work environments tend to be rough, as the news makes its own hours and the media industry in general doesn't have the experience with good project/product management that you'd expect at a tech company. On the other hand the work is super cool, and it's always fun to see your projects exposed to millions of people. There's also a very guerrilla spirit among the journo tech people that I've met that's really fun to be around. As projects are often time-sensitive one-offs, there's also a lot more experimentation with new tech than you'll find elsewhere. If you're interested in the field look at the stuff Nicar and the Knight Foundation do, and look to see if your town has a local hackshackers meetup group.

dcole2929 12y ago
I'm definitely going to look into this now. I did some work for a journalism class that was funded by the Knight Foundation so not sure why it never occurred to me to look into them further. Thanks
- showerst 12y ago
  No prob. Not sure what your exact skills are but anybody with even basic data scraping/munging/analysis skills, and any data visualization stuff (especially d3 knowledge) is super employable valuable right now. There probably aren't that many spots in raw numbers, but I think the right candidate wouldn't have too hard a time getting picked up somewhere.