My First Byline: Will Craft
Data editor, Guardian U.S.
What is your current job?
I am the data editor for the Guardian US. I work under the investigations team, but I'm also kind of cross-posted to the visuals team where I help manage data and graphics projects.
What was your first byline?
The first big investigations project, and the one that set the course of my whole career, was Officer Involved (the link remarkably works a decade later). I was an intern at KPCC, the NPR public radio station in LA. I was an intern on the data team and got a front row seat to watch the KPCC data team (Chris Keller now at AP and Aaron Mendelson now at the Trace) build the investigation. They created a system to digitize and verify the forms that the district attorney would file when they declined to press charges in an officer involved shooting. It was one of the first times I witnessed how these computer and math skills could be put to good use for investigative reporting.
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What was your first real job in journalism?
Shortly after my internship with KPCC, I got a year-long fellowship with a new investigations team started at KPCC's parent company, called APM Reports. I was at APM Reports for about 8 years. You can read an interview I did for the company corporate blog about my internship from 2016.
How did you get it?
I got my job with APM Reports because I was an intern at KPCC, and I was an intern at KPCC on the data team because I had programming experience on my resume. I always thought I was going to get a Ph.D. in political science when I was in college, so I learned how to do computer programming because I thought it would help me do scholarly research. I was kinda right, it comes in very handy for journalism research.
What advice do you have for people looking to break into journalism?
This is going to sound shitty, but have a back-up plan. We are journalists because we care about the public, we care about the truth, and we care about helping people understand their world. There are a lot of other jobs out there that allow you to work in and around community. Go work in government, public advocacy, public benefit law, etc. Especially for people who want to be data journalists, our skills are invaluable for government, especially in departments of health and environment. It's a sad reality that there are more journalists than there are journalism jobs.