About the role
Harbourline Gazette is a fictional regional daily. This sample listing illustrates a climate data reporter role: someone who finds the story in a spreadsheet of tide gauges, heat readings or infrastructure maintenance records, and then explains it to readers who have never opened a dataset.
The reporter would sit on the climate desk, work closely with graphics editors and help the whole newsroom handle numbers with care.
What you will do
- Find, clean and analyse public environmental and infrastructure datasets, and document the steps you took.
- Write stories that explain what the data does and does not show, including its limits and uncertainty.
- Work with graphics editors on charts and maps and review them for accuracy before publication.
- Interview scientists, engineers and residents to give the numbers human context.
- Share your methods in short notes so that colleagues can check and reuse them.
- Help colleagues on other desks sanity-check figures in their own stories.
What we are looking for
- Reporting or research experience that involved working with data, even if mostly in spreadsheets.
- Comfort with basic statistics such as rates, percentages and averages, and a healthy caution about their misuse.
- Optional skill with simple scripting or database queries, or willingness to learn.
- Clear, plain writing about technical subjects.
- A careful approach to attribution and uncertainty.
How the team works
The climate desk is small and works closely with the investigations unit. Because the role is remote, much of the collaboration happens in shared documents and short video calls. Coastal-region familiarity is a plus because many stories involve local infrastructure and flood risk.
Editors encourage regular training time and give the reporter a budget for data courses in this sample listing.
Pay and conditions
The illustrative range is $82,000 to $104,000 for a full-time role, written for this launch edition and not drawn from real salary data.
A real listing would explain equipment, home-office support, working hours and how the newsroom handles stories that need fast turnaround during weather events. Candidates are welcome to discuss accessibility adjustments at any point.