WFYI Public Media Job Description

WFYI is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer and is now accepting applications for:

Job Title: Education Reporter - Enterprise

Classification: Full-time (three-year grant funded position)

Salary: Commensurate with experience

Position:  WFYI Public Media is seeking an innovative audio journalist to report on and uncover disparities in public education across Indiana. For the next year, this person will focus on the pandemic’s impact on the state's 1.1 million students, their schools and teachers.

All WFYI journalism initiatives investigate the intersections of people and policy. You will be part of a new six-person education team focused on systemic inequities in public education and the approaches to addressing them. 

You will regularly report and produce audio features and their corresponding, web articles for WFYI.org. Those data-driven stories will explore the intersection of race, class, ability, gender, immigration status and a student’s equitable access to a public education. To tell these stories, you may find yourself in a third grade Indianapolis classroom, a family’s living room in Gary or a school board meeting in a small town.

WFYI is Central Indiana’s leading non-commercial media outlet and its NPR and PBS station. It has founded, supported and worked with award-winning local, statewide, regional and national journalism and audience engagement initiatives. You will work with 35 reporters, editors and engagement specialists, including WFYI’s health journalism initiative Side Effects Public Media and the statewide collaboration Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Major Responsibilities:

• Value, contribute to and sustain WFYI’s commitment to a culture of belonging that sees our culture’s history of power and privilege and seeks to balance that with the inclusion of many diverse experiences and perspectives.

• Produce sound rich, narrative audio features that relay human experience. 

• Digital storytelling with clear, concise writing that makes complicated issues accessible and informs our audience why a story is important to them.

• Daily broadcast news will be required if there’s a development you are actively covering.

• Cultivate expertise in education policy and issues to generate ideas for high impact stories, including meeting with sources, background research, submitting public records requests, and other investigative functions.

• Integrate audience interaction with reporting by working with the education team’s community engagement specialist. 

• Partner and coordinate with Indiana Public Broadcasting’s education policy reporter on coverage and multi-platform projects. 

• Schedule flexibility (some evening, weekend and holiday work). 

Qualifications:

• Good natured, ambitious and ready to build a new education journalism initiative.

• 1-2 years reporting experience.

• Professional level audio production experience preferred. 

• Familiarity with NPR and other public media journalism.

• Excellent communication skills and ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and work under deadline pressure. 

• Multiplatform experience including writing and AP Style, shooting video, taking photos, posting to social media and on content management systems.