Fellow nerds!
Priceonomics is hiring another staff writer to join our troop. We’re looking for someone who will take a rigorous, data-driven approach to telling stories.
There are three skills we’re looking for in the next person who joins our team.
First, you need have a good instinct for picking interesting topics to write about. Staff writers at Priceonomics only work on about one article per week, so the topic you select really matters. Wasting good time on a bad idea is a cardinal sin.
Second, you need to explain topics in depth and find the right answer. We want every article we publish at Priceonomics to be a definitive treatment of the subject. We don’t want superficial summaries or opinion pieces. You have to not only ask an interesting question, but you have to answer it correctly and without speculation.
Finally, you should be comfortable with citing and using data to make your arguments. While not everything we publish is data-intensive, our data-driven articles are part of what makes us distinctive. It’s part of our editorial DNA.
About Priceonomics
We publish a mix of data-driven stories and longform content. Not every article we publish is highly quantitative, but that’s probably what we’re best known for. We make money by helping companies turn their raw, messy data into interesting stories using the Priceonomics Data Studio and by licensing our Content Tracker software.
Data, economics, business, and science are common topics of Priceonomics articles. We rarely write about politics or sports, and we don’t really cover the news. Instead we publish essays and longform journalism that we expect to have some staying power.
As a staff writer, your primary role is to publish one in-depth article per week on a topic of your choosing. You’re judged primarily based on the quality of the article as opposed to traffic. (We have no display advertising on our site, so page views are only as important as their correlation to quality).
The job is based in San Francisco. We also have a freelance program for people who are interested in contributing remotely.
How to Apply
Send us an email (jobs@priceonomics.com) with the subject line “Staff Writer Application” and the following information:
1. What you consider to be your relevant resume information (links to your online footprint, your Linkedin, your resume, etc.).
2. A list of story ideas. Check out our front page to get a flavor for what kind of topics we like. Please include the angle you’d take rather than just a topic or headline (ie. “Market manipulations in the fine art market” rather than just “Fine art is bullshit”).
3. Your best writing sample. Send us a link or attachment of the writing sample that you’d like us to read. You can send along more than one, but please specify which one you’re most proud of.
4. Try to solve this data puzzle. If you’re a data whiz, it should be relatively straightforward. If you’re a novice, you should still be able to arrive at a decent answer based on the clues. As a Priceonomics staff writer, you don’t have to write about data, but you shouldn’t be afraid of it.