Associate Director for Data & AI Investigations and Partnerships

Overview

The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism is seeking an innovative and collaborative data journalist to serve as Associate Director for Data & AI Investigations and Partnerships.

The Howard Center is an investigative reporting unit and journalism training program based at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Funded by the Scripps Howard Foundation, it regularly partners with major national newsrooms — such as NPR, PBS NewsHour, The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) — to produce deeply reported investigations.

The center specializes in investigative reporting that requires complex data and digital document analysis, advanced computational methods, open source intelligence (OSINT), applied machine learning, large language models and other forms of artificial intelligence. The center is also launching a new program to maintain a curated set of newsworthy data and document collections for use by other journalists.

Responsibilities

• Launch and manage a new initiative to gather and maintain a curated set of newsworthy data and document collections for journalists and researchers to use.
• Assist the Howard Center director in establishing and managing data-driven reporting collaborations with professional and academic newsroom partners.
• Manage selected student-driven investigative data journalism projects in collaboration with professional news organization partners.
• Work to responsibly incorporate large language models and other forms of artificial intelligence into the investigative reporting workflow.
• Oversee the work of a Howard Center staff member and graduate fellows specializing in investigative data journalism.
• As a member of the Merrill College faculty, teach one hands-on class per year tied to Howard Center data investigations.

Preferred Experience

We expect successful candidates to bring some of the experiences listed below. No candidate is expected to have all of them.

• Experience producing investigative data journalism as a reporter.
• Experience managing investigative data journalism projects as an editor, project manager or similar role.
• Experience building and maintaining newsworthy databases or document collections for internal newsroom or external partner use.
• Experience experimenting with — or a demonstrated interest in learning — new approaches to investigative reporting using large language models, agentic systems, machine learning or other forms of artificial intelligence.
• Experience establishing or managing editorial collaborations with internal or external newsroom partners.
• Teaching and mentoring experience.
• Management experience.

Minimum Requirements

Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree and a minimum of four years of post-college experience working as a professional journalist, including data journalism experience.