WSJ seeks reporter to cover federal prosecutors

The Wall Street Journal is looking for an experienced reporter to cover the most high-profile law-enforcement jobs in the nation: the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan and the Eastern District Attorney, in Brooklyn.

You will be based in New York and report to the chief of the Journal’s law bureau.

The reporter for this high-profile assignment needs to love big, breaking news stories, as well as deeply reported narratives and enterprise journalism.

The job is fast-paced and varied. In recent years, Federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn have played significant roles in a variety of cases with national implications, and often lead the nation’s most pressing and high-profile prosecutions involving financial and white-collar crimes. The offices have also bolstered prosecutions of domestic terrorism and cybercrime.

In recent years, the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan prosecuted cases against former President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen; financier Jeffrey Epstein; and Halkbank, the largest state-owned bank in Turkey, for a multi-billion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Earlier, the office brought a string of insider-trading cases against some of Wall Street’s largest players, including SAC Capital and Galleon Group’s Raj Rajaratnam. Prosecutors in the Eastern District are investigating Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in nursing homes and prosecuted Sinaloa drug cartel chief, Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as El Chapo.

You will be expected to break news on a regular basis, and to this end, will be expected to source deeply with people close to both offices. You should be able to write quickly and cleanly on court hearings and legal filings, and also be able to drive deeper enterprise work on crime and criminal justice.

A law degree is not required, nor is any previous legal-reporting experience. But you should know the basics of how the legal and court systems operate, and be able to quickly get up to speed on any legal topic, as required.

We’re looking for someone who is an eager collaborator; you will frequently be called upon to work with colleagues and bureaus from across coverage areas at the Journal.

You should be very digitally-minded and smart in thinking about how to ride a news story online. At least five years of reporting experience is preferred.

To apply, go here.