Investigative Reporter

Investigative Reporter, Investigative Journalism Foundation

Location: Remote, anywhere in Canada.

Salary: $75,000-$95,000

Deadline: Dec. 19, 5 pm EST

About the Investigative Journalism Foundation

The Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) is a nonprofit newsroom focused on public interest journalism. We are a new kind of media outlet, built around databases on who donates to politicians across Canada, who lobbies them, and how the government spends your money.

The IJF is rapidly growing and is proud to be named one of the world’s most innovative media companies by Fast Company magazine. We were also selected for Fast Forward’s accelerator for tech non-profits, won an Anthem Award for our Open By Default database, two gold medals at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards and the Product of the Year award from LION Publishers.

As a nonprofit, nonpartisan media outlet, our primary purpose is to serve the public. We do this by publishing in-depth investigative journalism that speaks truth to power. Our databases are also used by other journalists, policymakers and academics seeking to increase transparency and strengthen Canadian democracy.

About this job

This role is funded by a three-year NSERC Applied Research and Development grant, held by Humber Polytechnic in partnership with the IJF. The successful candidates salary will be paid partially from Humber Polytechnic and partially from the IJF.

We are looking for a journalist who has an interest and expertise in politics and government procurement at all levels. The successful candidate will devote 40 hours per week to helping to expand and report on our procurement database, which tracks billions of dollars worth of contracts that are awarded by government agencies across Canada.

We’re happy to hear from candidates based anywhere in Canada. Successful candidates will be excited about working with a mission-driven nonprofit that uses journalism to strengthen Canadian democracy every day.

What you’ll do at the IJF:

• Dive deep into our procurement and other databases to find both long-form stories and tidbits worthy of inclusion in our newsletter.
• Write stories that speak truth to power by combining access-to-information requests, data wrangling and shoe-leather reporting.
• Collaborate with IJF developers on data acquisition and strategies to collect the best possible information relating to procurement from federal, provincial and municipal governments.
• Collaborate with IJF developers on the creation of new public interest databases.
• Collaborate with other IJF reporters on everything from story-idea generation to long-term investigations.
• Work on co-productions with reporters in partner newsrooms at some of the largest media outlets in the country.

We’re looking for someone with:

• Experience writing in-depth or investigative stories that make the world a better place. We’re looking for people who have shown a dedication to uncovering the truth.
• The ability to spend months methodically working on a long-term investigation while simultaneously bringing an accountability lens to quick-turnaround pieces.
• Excitement about working in a data journalism-focused newsroom. We integrate things like web scraping, data visualization, machine learning and natural language processing in our editorial process.
• Experience working with spreadsheets and data. Programming knowledge and advanced scraping and data skills are assets.
• A genuine interest in working with others. Our newsroom is deeply collaborative and we regularly work with other media outlets. We believe the best journalism happens when we work together.

Job Criteria

• Seniority level: Entry level
• Employment type: Full-time
• Job function: Marketing, Public Relations, and Writing/Editing
• Industries: Technology, Information and Media