The Wall Street Journal is seeking an experienced Automation Editor to help implement emerging data-driven processes in the newsroom. This is a new position that will be responsible for establishing best practices for natural language, machine learning and real-time data used within our ongoing story and publishing workflows.
This Automation Editor will work in close collaboration with the Editor, Emerging Processes and coverage chiefs to identify technical solutions for new processes. This a unique opportunity to envision and manage important AI technology implementation across our wide areas of coverage and work cross functionally in a vibrant newsroom.
The editor will sit within the Journal’s Media Science Lab, a part of its Strategy unit, which is an incubator for new technologies, audience growth, community and news innovation. The unit includes the full range of journalistic talent that makes the Journal one of the leading news organizations in the world — writers, video journalists, graphics designers, editors, product managers, engineers, designers, data scientists, artificial intelligence experts and more — in a lively, collaborative project to discover new offerings of journalistic value.
Tasks/Responsibilities
- Work with Editor, Emerging Processes to develop automation strategy for the newsroom and create pipeline of data-driven news processes.
- Manage the entire content automation implementation. This includes identify, verify and validate relevant data sources; format and load data into structured formats; feed data into content generation engines; and work with product and engineering teams to seamlessly integrate automated stories into CMS.
- Develop applications and libraries to automate newsroom processes and work alongside coverage chiefs to identify content to be automated such as financial reports and news alerts.
- Proactively identify opportunities for collaboration with editorial teams and conduct research to identify areas for optimization.
- Preserve and uphold WSJ ethical standards in automation processes.
- Keep a finger on the pulse of storytelling trends, technologies and platforms, continuously identifying and evaluating the usefulness of these developments to WSJ audiences.
- Document projects and develop best practices to share knowledge inside and outside the newsroom.
- Help identify data science methods, technologies or tools worth exploring for WSJ audiences. Determine the processes and techniques by which we could use them.
Key Attributes/Knowledge/Experience
- Experience applying computational methods to journalism.
- Excellent news judgment and strong editing skills.
- Knowledge of natural language generation and template writing.
- Knowledge of R and Python (Pandas and Scikit-Learn). Experience with machine learning and natural language processing using open source libraries including TensorFlow, Scikit-Learn, SpaCy, NLTK is preferred.
- Collaborative spirit and ability to lead within environment where resources are shared with other teams.
To apply, go here.
Chris RoushChris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.