Associate Director (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.

About the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

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

The Associate Director for Data & AI Investigations and Partnerships will:

• 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 and edit 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. We are looking for someone who can demonstrate relevant experience in some of these areas, while articulating a clear interest in the others.

• 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

Please provide:

• 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).

Salary, Benefits and Job Details

This position is a 12-month, full-time, professional track faculty position, based in the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. The internal university title is Lecturer. The position does not carry tenure.

The posted salary range for this position is $155,000 - $180,000 per year.

The position has excellent State of Maryland benefits, including:

• 41 days of leave per year (22 vacation days, 3 personal days, 16 holidays) and 15 days of sick leave.
• A choice of an excellent defined-benefit retirement plan (a State of Maryland pension) or a defined-contribution retirement plan — the public sector equivalent of a 401(k) — with a generous employer contribution (employer contributes an extra 7.25% of salary, with no employee contribution required to receive it).
• Great State of Maryland insurance for healthcare, prescription drugs, dental, vision, term-life, accidental death and long-term disability.
• Tuition remission at the University of Maryland, College Park and other University System of Maryland schools for you and your dependents.
• Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Additional benefit details here: https://uhr.umd.edu/benefits-and-wellness

This is a five-day-per-week, in-person position based at the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Maryland. The position reports to the Howard Center director. The position is not eligible for a permanent, fully remote or hybrid schedule, but occasional remote work is allowed with the approval of the Howard Center director. College Park is located three miles from Washington, D.C., inside the Capital Beltway, and is easily accessible by car, bike and public transportation (Metro, bus, campus shuttles).

Questions?

Please contact the hiring manager, Howard Center Director Sean Mussenden (smussend@umd.edu).