Tech Reporter

CalMatters/The Markup is looking for an ambitious reporter to cover technology in California and beyond, including:

• How state and national policymakers are attempting to regulate technology and promote tech investment
• The growing social and political influence of the tech industry — in California, nationally, and abroad
• The on-the-ground implementation of technology and how technologies directly affect Californians and others in their daily lives 

This reporter will have an appetite to produce frequent stories on their beat as well as an aptitude for sustaining longer-term accountability and enterprise stories. They should have a deep understanding of technology and the tech industry as well as a heartfelt curiosity about how people in California interact with and are affected by it.

You’ll be joining a single newsroom — CalMatters and The Markup merged in 2024 — and be able to leverage the attributes of both websites to reach a wide range of readers.

What You’ll Do:

• Help establish CalMatters as the state’s go-to source of tech policy coverage, explore the ways tech is affecting people’s lives and influencing consumers, businesses, the statehouse, law enforcement and education and beyond, and produce compelling journalism across multiple platforms explaining the ramifications of these changes, with a particular eye toward policy ramifications and their impact on ordinary people.
• Write enterprise stories that go beyond daily coverage, leveraging public records, openly-available digital data, reader crowdsourcing and old-fashioned reporting to reveal harms, problems, opportunities and innovations relevant to the intersection of tech and policy — and helping to extend and expand the legacy of The Markup.
• Shine a light on the growing influence of the tech industry by opening new lines of reporting around lobbying and other types of influence campaigns and by examining the evolution of tech influence efforts across time, political jurisdictions, and constituencies.
• Help force-multiply the tech team by empowering and collaborating with other reporters across beats to find compelling tech related stories.
• Use our Digital Democracy database — a cutting-edge tool that provides AI-generated tip sheets and data insights — to find exclusive stories. Translate complex technologies, tech implementation challenges, government regulation and policy debates into clear, accessible stories for our diverse audiences.
• Report for multiple platforms including our website, newsletters, radio and television.

What We’re Looking For:

• Several years of experience reporting on technology, preferably involving politics, policy, and California
• Proven ability to develop sources, including among users of technology, inside tech companies, within halls of power, and among advocacy and lobbying organizations
• A track record of accountability reporting and/or investigative work
• A collaborative approach to working with editors and colleagues on enterprise projects
• Time management skills to balance daily reporting with distinctive longer-term investigations
• Comfort with data analysis and public records requests

Bonus Skills:

• Experience conducting data journalism and/or collaborating with data journalists
• Experience with multimedia storytelling or social media content creation
• Familiarity with California’s political geography, from rural communities to urban centers

Compensation And Benefits

This full-time position with benefits is based in California and represented by the Pacific Media Workers Guild. The salary range for this position is $90,000 to $110,000 per year.

We offer a complete benefits package with medical, dental and vision insurance — we cover 95% of the cost for employees and dependents — from a range of HMO and PPO providers. We also offer paid family leave and will match contributions of up to 4% of your salary to our 401(k) program and provide life insurance at no cost.

The salary range above is our best estimate, in good faith, of what we expect to pay for this position. Our final salary figure will consider the candidate’s experience and skills, as well as our commitment to pay our staff equitably.

How To Apply

CalMatters is committed to becoming an antiracist organization. We are an expanding and collaborative newsroom, successfully forging a new model for sustainable, intelligent, nonprofit journalism. We do our best to center justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in all that we do—of which hiring is just one part. We encourage you to ask us about what concrete steps we are taking in service of these ideals. We strongly encourage applicants who are people of color, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities, regardless of national origin, alienage, and/or former incarceration status.

A college degree is not required. If you’re interested, provide a resume, work samples and a cover letter below. In your cover letter, using your own words, let us know how you would approach this role.

Please do not contact the hiring manager directly, and do not send resumés to staff at their individual email addresses. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, don’t hesitate to contact jobs [at] calmatters.org.

About CalMatters | The Markup

CalMatters, now in its eleventh year, is an award-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan news venture dedicated to explaining the policy and politics of America’s biggest state and the world’s fifth largest economy. In 2024, we merged with The Markup, a nonprofit national news publication that challenges technology to serve the public good.

We produce vivid, original multimedia journalism, data-driven news analyses and watchdog accountability reporting on calmatters.org and themarkup.org, and we distribute our work at no cost to more than 250 media partners. Our success metric isn’t clicks — it’s impact. Products at CalMatters/The Markup serve millions of people. For example:

• More than 1 in 5 California voters head to the pollsinformed by CalMatters’ nonpartisan Voter Guide.
• Blacklight, our real-time privacy inspector, has been used over 18 million times and helped journalists, nonprofits, and academicshold tech accountable.
• Digital Democracy, our unprecedented, custom-built AI tool that tracks everything you’d want to know about state legislators hasunearthed stories and prompted legislators to call for change.

We also have the most diverse major newsroom in California. Here you’ll be working alongside dozens of experienced journalists in a supportive, collaborative atmosphere.