Cross-posted from the Chicago Tribune news apps team blog…
Join our team!
Requirements:
- A passion for the news
- An understanding of the inner workings of the web
- Attention to detail and hatred for inaccuracy
- A genuine and friendly disposition
Position one: User experience designer / information architect
Our team is in need of someone who will lead the design conversation. Someone who will interview stakeholders, develop personas, intuit features, arrange information, draw mockups, and everything else necessary to design a web site. You will work fast and agile, in tight iterations, and in close contact with our stakeholders — the editors and reporters of the Chicago Tribune.
You should also be ready to close the loop and put our work in front of users, take their feedback, and redesign it all — cuz that’s what you gotta do when you’re agile.
You must care deeply about usability and grok the web.
Extra points if you love to sketch, didn’t have to google ‘grok’, and don’t need an education on agile development practices.
Position two: Web designer / developer
We are also in need of a creative web designer. Someone who cuts tight, valid and semantic HTML/CSS and makes it look *hot*. Graphic design skills are a must, but we also require the ability to implement those designs. We need more than a photoshop jock. You will work fast and agile, in tight iterations, and in close contact with our stakeholders — the editors and reporters of the Chicago Tribune.
(If you’re a print designer, you’re probably not who we’re looking for, but we’ll do our best to not be prejudiced. Show us you’ve got serious web chops, and we’ll talk.)
Extra points if you have worked with Django (we’ll welcome Rails skillz too, they translate) and have built many beautiful websites.
Even more points (for both positions) if you know a thing or two about:
- Data science (statistics, exploratory data analysis, R)
- Information design (beautiful charts, graphs and other Tufte-geekery)
- Building and gardening social media or crowdsourcing applications
Some days we’ll huddle and sketch with reporters, imagining ways to present information and tell their story on the web — and we might turn that story around in a day, a week or a month. Other days, we’ll develop news products that’ll take months to realize.
Either way, we work fast and lean, relying heavily on frameworks, and following agile best practices. It’s fun.
Things we’ve built lately:
Gear you’ll get:
- One shiny, new MacBook Pro (or an iMac, if you’d prefer)
- One CDM (Cheap Dell Monitor)
- One comfy Aeron chair
- …all at a desk somewhere in the Tribune newsroom, where you’ll be surrounded by reporters arguing with the cops, yelling about the ball game, telling crazy stories, and otherwise practicing their trade.
There is no free pop, pinball or posh cafeteria.
But, you’ll like what you do. You’ll come to work energized, and leave satisfied that you’ve done something that will make your mom proud. You’ll have held our government accountable, spoken truth to power, given voice to the voiceless, and contributed to the public good.
Beat that, Google.
Interested? Email your info to newsapps@tribune.com. Thanks!
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