Data Analyst, News Analytics

Job Description

The Washington Post is seeking a data analyst with proven experience in journalism or digital media to join the team dedicated to providing the newsroom with meaningful, data-informed insights and training. Understanding audience behavior, trends and desires and translating them into actionable strategies that can be implemented across The Post’s newsroom teams will be integral to our goal of expanding the reach and impact of our journalism.

As part of the News Analytics, Insights & Training team based in the newsroom, you will be responsible for parsing data and establishing insightful takeaways that editors and reporters can use to better understand the needs of audiences as we continue to push The Post’s world-class journalism into a variety of formats.

Ideal candidates for this position will have a passion for uncovering trends and insights from data, understanding audience behavior, following the latest trends and experiments in the industry, and creating replicable workflows to scale analysis and our team’s impact. They will be thoughtful about the large and small strategies that can be implemented to improve our audience’s experience of our journalism while maintaining a deep commitment to our public service mission.

Responsibilities

• Support key strategic analyses on audience behavior and trends for the newsroom
• Design reports, dashboards and data workflows that support the daily analytics needs of audience and curation editors
• Answer ad hoc questions about how The Post’s journalism reaches and engages audiences
• Partner with colleagues in the data, analytics and product teams to design data tools that scale to the needs of The Post’s newsroom
• Support editors by conducting regular deep dives on coverage reach and engagement

Requirements and Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience in website analytics
• Proven expertise and deep experience with Google Analytics (or similar) and data analysis using Google Sheets or Excel
• Skills in visualizing data, drawing conclusions, synthesizing insights and explaining to a non-technical audience
• Ability to work independently with minimal day-to-day supervision as well as in a collaborative team environment

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience fetching and analyzing data using tools such as SQL, Python, R and/or analytics APIs
• Experience working in a newsroom with a variety of stakeholders including editors, reporters, and newsroom leaders
• Strong analysis and experimental design skills with a keen sense for data gaps and inconsistencies
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly the ability to develop narratives around findings and adjust delivery for different audiences
• Self-starter with the ability to work in a constantly changing environment