ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network helps produce vital, investigative journalism in communities where such stories would otherwise not be done. Now entering its ninth year, the program will be taking on 15 new partnerships over the course of 2026. 

Applications for all 15 projects are open now and will be considered on a rolling basis using the deadlines below. There will be three fellowship periods and we will select five fellows for each round:

For these partnerships, ProPublica will provide a grant, to be paid in monthly installments, to the selected newsroom reflecting the annual salary (up to $80,000 plus a 25% allowance for benefits) for one full-time reporter in each newsroom. Successful candidates will have a proven track record of investigative reporting and impact, and will provide a memo about the project they’re proposing working on for the duration of the one-year partnership.

Strong applications will express why the project needs to be told in your community — we’re eager for projects that can’t be done anywhere else. They will also explain how the project would benefit from this collaboration, potentially including the role that our data, research and engagement reporting resources could play, and they will discuss how the project may resonate with both local and national audiences. 

Once accepted, local reporters will work from and report to their home newsrooms while receiving extensive support and guidance for their work from ProPublica, including collaboration with a senior editor and access to the nonprofit newsroom’s expertise. The work will be published or broadcast by your newsroom and simultaneously by ProPublica.

ProPublica reporters and editors are available to answer questions or to give you feedback on your application before you submit it. Please reach us at Local.Reporting@propublica.org. 

We are unable to accept applications via email. No phone calls, please.

We will be accepting applications for this role until at least Monday, June 1st at 3PM ET.

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust — and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account.

Short-form video has been and will continue to be how many people receive news about the world, which is why we are looking to expand ProPublica’s social video team with a two-year temporary social video producer.

This role will translate our long-form journalism into short-form, video-first content for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts and our other social platforms. We see our platforms not just as traffic drivers to our stories but also as a means for us to build stand-alone editorial products. Since the social video team’s creation, our work has adapted Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court and state abortion bans. We’ve showcased reporters and their investigations into ICE detention centers, bird flu outbreaks, cuts to USAID and more.

We’re looking for someone who understands platform trends and can create vertical, short-form social videos. This person should also be comfortable working with journalists and editors across the newsroom to get the findings of our work in front of new audiences.

This role will help uphold the standard and tone for how we connect with our current social video audiences while expanding our reach to new ones. You will be at the center of one of the most exciting newsrooms in the country, where visual storytelling is integral to our mission.

This temporary two-year role will report to our social video editor and sits within the larger ProPublica audience team.

Essential Responsibilities

• Create video content that is grounded in ethical journalistic principles, standards and practices, and use editorial judgment to translate stories with the sensitivity, care and appropriate tone required of our investigations.
• Collaborate with reporters, editors, visual editors, audience team members and other staffers to identify and produce compelling video storytelling.
• Own the creative and technical production for videos from beginning to end, including writing and editing scripts, working with reporters and editors to gather visual assets, designing any as-needed still and motion graphics, and writing the social post captions.
• Serve as the on-screen narrator/host for videos, maintaining a voice and approach for explainer-type and host-led video content that is appropriate for ProPublica’s brand. 
• Shoot and edit video in studio, remotely and in the field, ensuring high-quality production values.
• Identify and edit compelling media clips for video podcasts, live events, media appearances and more and adapt them into optimized formats for social platforms.
• Manage multiple projects in various stages of production, sometimes meeting tight deadlines. 
• Monitor the editorial calendar and pitch ideas for social video content and packages.
• Define and maintain our workflow processes and systems to ensure a consistent production of video content.
• Track monthly video analytics reports that can help inform future optimization, strategy and more.
• Track evolving trends amid video platforms and their audiences and share insights with the team.

About You

We are looking for people who have proven that they can use video and design skills for journalistic ends.

The ideal candidate will have many of these skills:

• Three or more years of video journalism, content production and/or video editing experience.
• Fluency telling stories for social platforms with text on screen, voice-overs, direct-to-camera or other methods.
• Strong understanding of algorithmic trends and platform optimization strategies, including expertise in crafting effective video titles, thumbnails, descriptions and metadata to maximize reach and engagement across social platforms.
• Experience conducting on-camera interviews and directing video subjects in person and remotely. 
• Proficiency in media production software (e.g., Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, CapCut, Photoshop, Figma).
• Strong writing and editing skills.
• The ability to communicate social storytelling ideas through scripts or storyboards and advocate for projects with social potential across the newsroom.
• Experience with project management software such as Trello, Airtable or Notion.
• A collaborative mindset, stellar communication skills and the ability to work on several projects at once. You’ll need to stay organized and focused and meet deadlines.
• Ability to travel, as needed, for assignments, training and staff meetings. 

And these skills are desirable:

• Experience using a digital asset management system such as WoodWing.
• Knowledge of media rights and clearances and a working knowledge of copyright permissions.
• Experience in a newsroom or media organization.

This job is full time and includes benefits. ProPublica is based in New York, but we’re open to remote candidates in the U.S. We have offices in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; Phoenix; and Berkeley, California. Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

The expected salary range for this position is $90,000 to $105,000.

This is a good-faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps.

We will begin reviewing applications as we receive them, but we will continue to consider candidates as long as the posting remains live on our site.

Questions? Send an email to talent@propublica.org.

No phone calls, please.

Applications will be accepted through at least May 15, 2026, at 12:00 PM ET.

Engagement reporters do ProPublica’s signature crowdsourced investigations, using everything from callouts and tip lines to citizen-fueled science. As an engagement reporter, you’ll team up with colleagues across the country to gather evidence and receipts for hard-hitting, community-driven stories. You may also work with external partners on long- and short-term projects through our Local Reporting Network. You’ll find and reach people who have important stories to tell, figure out how to include them in the reporting process and work on journalism that could help improve their lives. You’ll likely come across more stories and new leads in the process.

Like everyone in our newsroom, our team focuses on accountability journalism and measures success by impact. We’ve worked with communities to tell thousands of people’s stories, including educators, parents, mental health providers, wildfire survivors, migrant dairy farm workers, vulnerable workers and residents living near toxic hot spots. We’ve filled information gaps with calculators, guides and letter generators. And we’ve done our best to reach people in the spaces where they gather, both online and off. This journalism has led to impact big and small, from equipping patients with better information to a promised $2 billion to fix Idaho public school buildings. 

What You’ll Do Here:

• Identify promising crowdsourcing opportunities and team up with other reporters to do investigative stories that rely on community outreach and engagement.
• Craft and manage callouts, surveys and other crowdsourcing tools for investigations. Help keep track of ProPublica’s extensive network of respondents to our previous callouts, and help reporters reengage relevant groups as reporting lines arise.
• Research communities and get to know people who live and work in the places we’re covering. Strategize methods to engage sources clearly, effectively and compassionately.
• Listen for, pitch and take the lead on service journalism opportunities, such as tools and guides.
• Review, flag and sometimes follow up on promising tips that come in through ProPublica’s newsroom tip lines. Identify themes and promising angles.
• Develop relationships with long-term community sources, such as union stewards, members of the clergy, Reddit moderators, petition managers and other local leaders.
• Collaborate with national, local and specialty reporting teams across ProPublica and in our many partner newsrooms, including through our Local Reporting Network.
• Brainstorm the biggest ideas you can imagine with a team of the most creative engagement journalists in the country. 

This job is full time and includes benefits. ProPublica is based in New York, but we’re open to remote candidates. We have offices in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; Phoenix; and Berkeley, California. Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

The expected salary range for this position is $85,000 to $120,000.

This is a good-faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps.

You Should Apply If:

• You have at least three years of journalism experience, either in reporting or an engagement-focused role. Most successful engagement reporters come from backgrounds in newsrooms, but we are open to people with skill sets from different industries.
• You’ve worked on stories that shed light on injustices and hold the powerful accountable. You don’t need to have done monthslong investigations, but you do need experience reporting. 
• You’ve got a track record of creative outreach. Perhaps you’ve run a Facebook group, optimized headlines for search, built a newsletter list or user-tested an app. Maybe you’ve produced events, A/B tested mass mailers, canvassed neighborhoods or set up a listening post. Online or off, you had a strategy and you adapted it along the way. 
• You’re an active, excellent listener and a thoughtful writer who can match your style to the occasion. You understand the difference between messaging the moderator of a Facebook group and emailing a PR person for comment.
• You’ve got a strong news sense, a keen eye for detail and the ability to connect the dots in investigations.
• You’ve got the ability to work independently and with teammates on collaborative projects. You like working with others, but you’re also proactive about finding opportunities and pushing projects forward on your own. 
• You have the patience and organizational acumen for long-term projects. You probably have opinions about spreadsheets.

This role will involve occasional travel for team retreats, conferences and reporting projects.

What You Should Send Us:

Work examples are the most important part of this application.

The application form will require you to send us three projects from your portfolio, and it will give you the space to walk us through your own contributions to those clips. 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. Let us know how your engagement and outreach work shaped the output. Don’t be shy — tell us what succeeded, including numbers and evidence of impact, and feel free to share details on how you’d do it differently next time.

Make sure to read the section above, titled “You Should Apply If,” because it’s also our evaluation criteria for the position. Use your projects and the rest of your application to show us that you’ve got the skills we’ve listed or why the skills you have are the ones we actually need.                                    

We will begin reviewing applications as we receive them, but we will continue to consider candidates as long as the posting remains live on our site.

Questions? Send an email to talent@propublica.org. 

No phone calls, please.