Location: Chicago, IL
Crain’s Chicago Business seeks an associate research director to join its research team.
Data and research are a growing part of our business and we are looking for someone who can help us build out new projects as well as maintain our core, existing databases. Crain’s produces more than 30 lists each year covering different facets of the Chicago business community including franchise lists such as the largest privately held companies, Who’s Who, the Fast 50 and the Best Places to Work. In addition the department produces award-winning, visualization-heavy sections like MarketFacts. We work with reporters and editors to gather data for stories and other editorial packages throughout the year.
Duties include:
• Research, report and survey lists and other Crain's data projects both in print and online
• Ensure the quality and accuracy of Crain’s reports
• Supervise department and project-based interns
• Conceive and execute new research projects in collaboration with the research team and editors to create compelling and easy-to-understand visualizations with our graphics team
• Work with internal and external developers to produce online databases and interactive visualizations
Requirements:
The ideal candidate is a journalist first and foremost. But this isn’t (generally) a writing position. It’s researching, reporting, fact-checking and coming up with the best ways to present often-complicated, data-driven lists, rankings and reports.
You will need to be an expert in something new every week and juggle multiple deadlines at once. Some of our projects have six-month lead times; some of them have just a couple of days. Ideally, you’re a bit of a coder, too.
We’re looking for someone who can scrape a Web page, ingest a JSON file and get that into a database or Highcharts. We’re not necessarily looking for a “ninja" but comfort and familiarity with MySQL, or another relational database, as well as some Django/Python chops would be put to great use.
As an industry leader, Crain Communications Inc is one of the largest privately owned business media companies with 30 leading business, trade and consumer brands in North America, Europe and Asia. The company’s 850 employees in 11 locations produce exciting publications, digital products, events, marketing services, custom publishing, lead generation and research and data products to help its millions of readers and clients succeed.
To apply for this job, go to www.crain.com, click on “Careers”, then “Latest Positions”, and search by location.
Crain Communications Inc is an equal opportunity employer.