Investigative Impact Producer

An audience producer at NEWSWELL will help a new statewide investigative team maximize the reach and impact of our most significant journalism. This producer will help identify opportunities for impact, guide the processes to get there and build internal tracking and public-facing documentation about the effects of our work. This role will also help us promote and publicize the work itself.

In short, this job takes the journalism to the people.

This producer should come with a journalism background that may include reporting, editing or multimedia work, and should bring a deep familiarity with the ideas of impact and cross‑platform outreach. More importantly, this staffer will bring fresh ideas about how our unique regional or statewide reporting can be of service to our local audiences.

This producer will collaborate with the team’s senior statewide reporter, other team members and NEWSWELL’s local newsrooms, and should bring the sensibility of an innovator, teacher and collaborator to the role.

• Adding ideas for impact or suggesting additional reporting that could fuel impact
• Writing stories directly related at solutions or outcomes from our reporting
• Creating or managing graphics, databases, printed materials or other items that help connect audiences with our work
• Seeking out stakeholders or potential new audiences and conducting outreach to connect them with our work
• Brainstorming, organizing and executing community events, speaker forums, demonstrations or other public events

The role is part of a new standalone investigative team that serves the Western newsrooms in NEWSWELL’s nonprofit collective.

Every piece of our team’s work will focus on two equal priorities: impact and audience connection. This role lives at the intersection of both:

IMPACT:
All our efforts should pursue righting a wrong and demonstrating the power of journalism to improve public life.

AUDIENCE CONNECTION:
Everything we publish should also be in pursuit of strengthening audience ties to our newsroom, through two‑way dialogue, public events, uses of new platforms or other methods to demonstrate public outreach.

NEWSWELL helps newsrooms become nonprofit and for‑community, providing strategic guidance, innovative solutions and operational support so journalists can focus on what matters most: serving their communities. Through partnerships with Arizona State University — named the nation’s most innovative university for 11 years in a row — NEWSWELL brings cutting‑edge ideas, research and tools to reinvent local news and strengthen democracy.

Our innovative model has earned us support from journalistic and philanthropic organizations nationwide. This new team’s work is designed to leverage and grow that support, so that we can grow and transform local journalism.

This role pays $70,000-$80,000 annually.

• Support and amplify the process of conceiving, developing and producing investigative and accountability reporting.
• Build systems to help deliver exclusive findings and measure or track civic impact.
• Mentor and coach local newsrooms and collaborate on local reporting.
• Integrate solutions journalism, audience interaction and other innovative techniques into the investigative workflow.
• Collaborate with reporters and editors to present stories to a broad range of audiences.
• Use multiple digital publishing formats when appropriate.
• Support and help lead community forums and partner events; engage transparently with readers and stakeholders.
• Pilot new tools, including responsible AI, to enhance research, document analysis and workflow efficiency.
• Partner with ASU’s Walter Cronkite School and other…