Job Opening, Sacramento

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL RESEARCH

The Sacramento Bee is seeking an Assistant Director of Editorial Research with top-flight CAR skills to help supervise a staff of four and to team with reporters on special projects. The ideal candidate would have extensive research skills, including fluency with online and print information sources, as well as a willingness to get out of the office to acquire primary source documents and data. The researcher should be a tenacious self-starter, able to pursue the research needs of an assigned story, as well as to initiate ideas for and approaches to coverage. The job requires a mix of research support for breaking daily stories, for graphics and for longer-term investigative projects.

Qualifications:

Experience

Candidate should have at least three years experience working as a professional researcher, preferably for a news or media organization. Experience reporting, writing and/or editing for the news media is a plus. Experience in supervising and training others also is desirable.

Skills

Candidate should be proficient in standard library print sources, the Internet, and commercial information services, such as Factiva and Lexis-Nexis; and in online public record sources, such as Accurint and Merlin. Candidate should have skills in data manipulation programs: spreadsheets (e.g. Microsoft Excel); relational databases (e.g. Microsoft Access); GIS mapping (e.g. ArcView). Statistics expertise and skill with web authoring tools (e.g. Microsoft FrontPage) also are preferred.

Duties:

* Provide research support for reporters, editors, news artists/photographers, New Media content providers. Gather background material, statistics and other data for the production of long-term news project as well as daily stories, and informational graphics. Write timelines and other text for graphics. Manipulate data using standard computer tools (spreadsheets, relational databases and GIS). Seek out information in public records, whether available online or in government offices.
* Help manage a developing Editorial Research staff.
* Help train news staff in the use of research and data-manipulation tools.
* Help maintain the newsroom intranet.
* Manage the department in the Director's absence.

Contact:

Send resume, cover letter and sample research to either:

Pete Basofin
Director of Editorial Research
(916) 321-1170 or pbasofin@sacbee.com

or

Amy Pyle
Projects Editor
(916) 321-1050 or apyle@sacbee.com

The Sacramento Bee
P.O. Box 15779
Sacramento, CA 95852