Producer

Job Description

Question Everything is a weekly investigative podcast into how the truth gets buried, distorted, and denied — and the ways people are fighting to make it matter again. Hosted by Brian Reed (S-Town, The Trojan Horse Affair, This American Life) and Executive Produced by Robyn Semien (This American Life), the podcast is a co-production of Placement Theory and KCRW. Since launching, it has won a Webby Award and an Ambie Award for Best Reporting, as well as a Signal Special Achievement Award for expanding the boundaries of the audio medium. 

We're hiring a producer to join our small, ambitious, creative team — a journalist who can independently and confidently report, produce, and write narrative stories, and who is hungry to do their best work on a show with the editorial muscle to support it. Our office is based in Brooklyn, NY, but we accept remote applicants.

We're looking for someone with a strong reporting track record in narrative audio, ideally with experience covering some combination of media, tech, law, and politics to create stories and segments that center on sharp, urgent and sometimes unpredictable questions. You should be equally excited to chase stories that you will report and produce, and to produce stories reported by the host and outside contributors.

At Question Everything, we push ourselves to do ambitious, rigorous work. We value sharp editorial judgment, collaboration, curiosity, resilience, and inventiveness. We are looking for someone who can juggle multiple stories, adapt when things change fast, give and receive honest feedback, and who is always on the lookout for angles others miss. 

If you don’t check every box on the job description, we still want to hear from you. We’re committed to building a more diverse and inclusive newsroom, and we know great candidates don’t always come from the same path.

Job Requirements

Report and produce stories

• Independently report and produce your own stories and segments for the show. Pitch them, research them, chase and book interviewees, conduct interviews and get arresting tape, structure the story, cut the tape, write the script, execute changes through a rigorous editing and fact-checking process, and bring it through to air.
• Serve as lead producer on stories reported by Brian, outside contributors, or other staff. 
• Own all stages of the production process on stories you lead, from idea to publication.
• Assess the strength of potential interviewees in pre-interviews. Determine when to kill a story. 
• Reading deeply and cultivating sources on a beat relevant to our show such as media, tech, AI, politics, free speech and the first amendment. 

Help sustain and evolve Question Everything

• Generate, pitch, and refine story ideas. Attend regular story meetings.
• Participate in group edits — on stories you're producing and on those you're not.
• Make outreach to potential contributors, sources, and guests. Be an ambassador for Question Everything to the wider industry and the public.
• Contribute to the Substack newsletter, social channels, and other extensions of the show as appropriate.
• Help shape the vision, sound, and aesthetic of the show as it grows.

Operations and administrative support

• Communicate and collaborate with fact-checkers, mixers, attorneys, and others working on episodes — and in some cases oversee their workflows.
• Communicate and collaborate with our partners at KCRW, including providing episode language, social media, and newsletter assets.
• Help with scheduling, booking reporting travel, and managing tape and reporting materials.
• Provide feedback for developing and improving the show's production processes.
• A willingness and ability to travel for reporting when needed periodically.

What we're looking for

• Demonstrated experience as a reporter who can independently take a story from idea to finished segment. 
• Strong narrative audio skills — structuring interviews to get the strongest tape, managing and cutting the tape, structuring the story, writing for the ear, and crafting scenes that move. A plus if you bring your own POV and voice to the role: an issue you have an unorthodox take on, or a question you want to dig into and explore within the show’s wheelhouse. 
• Beat experience or deep curiosity in some mix of media, tech, law, and politics. A plus if you have sources in these fields and can dig up scoops and investigative leads. 
• Sharp news judgment and a nose for the questions other people aren’t asking. 
• A strong reporting toolkit: source-building, document work, FOIA, interviewing skills, an instinct for what's actually new in a story.
• Experience working with fact-checkers and lawyers on rigorously vetted journalism.
• Comfort working on a small team where everyone wears multiple hats.
• Proficient in Descript, ProTools, Google suite tools. Experience in Reaper a plus. 

This is a 1099 contractor role. We expect this to be at least a year long contract, with the possibility of a longer term. We're open to candidates at a range of experience levels; compensation will be commensurate with experience. The role also includes equity in Placement Theory, in keeping with our commitment to equity ownership for the creatives who make our shows.

We offer paid holidays and time off. Health insurance and other traditional benefits are not provided; candidates should factor that into their evaluation of the package.

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