Associate Director for Data & AI Investigations and Partnerships

Associate Director For Data & Ai Investigations And Partnerships

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.

The center, working with AP and FRONTLINE, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting in 2025 for an in-depth, data-driven investigation into police custody deaths. The investigation employed large language models to sift through hundreds of thousands of digital documents acquired through more than 7,000 public records requests. The team built an original database shared with partner newsrooms documenting more than 1,000 deaths after police used "nonlethal" restraint methods.

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

• 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 or managing people engaged in that work.
• 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 (which could include university-level teaching, running a workshop at a professional conference like IRE or NICAR, or informally teaching newsroom colleagues).
• Management experience (which could include experience managing professionals or experience managing early career journalists, interns or students).
• Experience with or a demonstrated interest in learning storytelling forms tailored to reach new audiences.

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.

Application Materials

• A resume.
• A cover letter. Please explain your interest in the position and how your prior work aligns with the list of responsibilities and preferred experience posted above.
• Links to three examples of your work, along with a brief explanation of your role in their production. The work could be data-driven investigative stories, data products (databases or document collections), tools (web applications, software libraries, GitHub repositories), or other materials (documentation, white papers, teaching or presentation materials, fact-checking notebooks).