Editor’s Note: The application period for the 2019–2020 class of Pacific Standard fellows closed on March 22nd, 2019. A team of editors will review all applications and respond directly to select candidates to arrange follow-up interviews. We anticipate we will begin accepting applications for the 2020–2021 class in February of 2020. Those listings—and all Pacific Standard job listings—will be available here.
Visuals Fellow
The ideal Pacific Standard visuals fellow is pursuing public interest journalism and interactive storytelling as a career, has experience working on digital storytelling projects in a deadline-oriented environment, and has an abiding interest in public policy and social justice, as well as an understanding that investigative reporting and academic research are vital to finding solutions for society’s most significant and pressing problems.
This fellow would work closely with several key members of our team and gain valuable experience in all aspects of digital publishing.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Work closely with our editorial and audience teams to produce well-executed interactive and data-focused projects to compliment our daily news coverage, investigations, and reported features.
- Assist the editorial staff with conceiving of and executing interactive and multimedia projects as a part of daily news coverage, social media initiatives, and feature stories.
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Pitch projects that have a primary focus on visual storytelling or data-focused elements.
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Help with general office responsibilities such as online story production and gathering materials—graphic, photographic, etc.—to accompany articles.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities
- Experience with simple graphic creation, as photo and video editing tools and techniques. An understanding of the Adobe Creative Suite is preferred.
- Competence in working with social science or research data to create visualizations that can either compliment reported stories or stand alone as an editorial product.
- Some familiarity with front-end code such as HTML, CSS, or Javascript, and a desire to learn more about coding as a way to create compelling visual products for editorial projects.
- Willingness to accept direction, and participate fully in a collaborative work environment.
- An ability to establish priorities, work independently, and proceed with multiple assigned objectives without close supervision
Fellowship Details
Because our fellowship is full time and one full year in length, it is not appropriate for matriculated students. The fellowship will commence the first week of July. The position pays a stipend of $30,000 for the year, paid in regular monthly installments, and fellows receive two weeks of vacation and one week of sick time for the duration of the program. It is expected that editorial fellows will work standard hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, in our Santa Barbara, California, offices.
To Apply
Please email a resume and cover letter to our audience team at audience@psmag.com, by end of day, March 22nd. Feel free to strengthen your application with a single sample of your work and potential visual, audio, or data projects that could accompany any recent Pacific Standard feature. All application materials should be submitted electronically. We regret that we cannot respond to all applicants. Absolutely no phone calls, please.
Engagement & Social Media Fellow
The ideal candidate for Pacific Standard’s engagement fellowship should be pursuing public interest journalism as a career, have experience with social media production and audience development, and have an abiding interest in public policy and social science. We’re a small office, so this role will directly support the growth of our site’s readership.
Our new engagement fellow will work closely with several key members of our audience team and gain valuable experience in many aspects of digital storytelling and engagement. Several previous fellows are now full-time Pacific Standard staff; others are in editorial positions at Outside, The Hollywood Reporter, Inverse, and other publications.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Assist the Pacific Standard team with building and maintaining the publication’s social strategy across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Track engagement and readership on a daily basis; identifying key trends and content partner sites that the audience team can use to spread our stories.
- Work closely with the audience team to foster outreach to our reading audience, creating graphics and copy that strengthens our daily and feature reporting.
- Brainstorm and develop engagement efforts in support of Pacific Standard stories and packages, connecting potential readers with our content and fueling conversation (through Reddit AMAs, for example).
- Help with general production responsibilities for the site, including working on the CMS to stage partner posts and translate print stories to digital formats.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities
- A strong understanding of Pacific Standard’s editorial voice and a willingness to learn how social media strategy can power audience growth.
- A sharp interest in the news production cycle and what kinds of stories the Internet enjoys.
- Experience producing copy tailored to individual social platforms, with a knowledge of what works best on each.
- An understanding of best practices for social media and audience engagement for journalistic outlets.
- Willingness to accept direction and participate fully in a collaborative and creative work environment, while also working independently and proactively on multiple assignments.
Fellowship Details
Because our fellowship is full time and one full year in length, it is not appropriate for matriculated students. The fellowship will commence the first week of July. The position pays a stipend of $30,000 for the year, paid in regular monthly installments, and fellows receive two weeks of vacation and one week of sick time for the duration of the program. It is expected that editorial fellows will work standard hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, in our Santa Barbara, California, offices.
To Apply
Please email a resume and cover letter to our audience team at audience@psmag.com, by end of day, March 22nd. Your cover letter should: outline some of your early ideas for increasing engagement on Pacific Standard’s existing social media platforms, and include an engagement plan for promoting one of our recent feature stories, including sample Tweets, Facebook posts, and ideas for outreach to audiences affected by the story or stories. All application materials should be submitted electronically. We regret that we cannot respond to all applicants. Absolutely no phone calls, please.
