Job Description Summary
Overview
The University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism is seeking an experienced investigative journalist to join its faculty as an investigative journalism professor. This person will also serve as the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism’s lead investigations editor.    

The Howard Center is an investigative reporting unit and journalism training program based at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Funded by the Scripps Howard Foundation, it regularly partners with major national newsrooms — such as NPR, PBS NewsHour, KFF Health News and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project — to produce deeply reported investigations. The center, founded in 2019, specializes in investigative reporting that incorporates complex data and digital document analysis, advanced computational methods, and, increasingly, visual forensic and open source intelligence (OSINT) reporting techniques. In a partnership with the Associated Press global investigations team and a FRONTLINE (PBS) documentary unit, the center was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting in 2025 for an in-depth, data-driven investigation into police custody deaths. The center has also won dozens of major journalism awards for its investigations, including two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a National Headliner Award and an IRE Medal. 

Job Title and Other Details
This position is a full-time, year-round, in-person position based in the Howard Center in College Park, Maryland. It is not eligible for a fully remote or hybrid schedule, although occasional remote work is allowed.  

This position is posted as an “open rank” position. We expect to hire this person as a “Professor” or “Associate Professor” — formal University of Maryland titles that provide tenure — or as a “Lecturer” or “Professor of the Practice” — titles that do not provide tenure or eligibility for tenure in the future.

If this person’s record of professional accomplishment meets or exceeds the university’s high standards for appointment as an “Associate Professor” or “Professor” with tenure, we expect to appoint them to that position. If it does not, we expect to appoint them as a “Lecturer” or “Professor of the Practice” on a five-year renewable contract.   

Minimum Requirements

Applicants must have: 

A bachelor’s degree.
A minimum of 5 years of experience working as a journalist. 
Experience producing investigative journalism as a reporter. 
Experience managing complex investigative journalism projects as an editor. 

Additional Job Details

Preferred Experience

We expect successful candidates to bring some of the experiences listed below. No candidate is expected to have all of them. We are looking for someone who can demonstrate relevant experience in some of these areas, while articulating a clear interest in the others:

• Teaching and mentoring experience, which could include university-level teaching or consistently running workshops at professional conferences like IRE and NICAR.

• Experience working with data journalists on data-driven investigative projects and an openness to experimenting with new reporting methods that incorporate artificial intelligence and open source intelligence.

• Experience leading or participating in investigative collaborations involving multiple newsrooms.  

• Experience with long-form writing and editing.

• Experience with — or a clear interest in learning — storytelling forms tailored to reach new audiences on multiple platforms. 

Application Materials 

• A CV 

• A cover letter in which you: 

  • Succinctly explain your interest in the position.  

  • Explain, with specifics, how your experience and interests align with the listed responsibilities, requirements and preferred experiences. 

• Links to three examples of your work, along with a brief explanation of your role in their production. 

Benefits

The position has excellent State of Maryland benefits, including:

• 41 days of leave per year (22 vacation days, 3 personal days, 16 holidays) and 15 days of sick leave per year. 

• A choice of a defined-benefit retirement plan (a State of Maryland pension) or a defined-contribution retirement plan — the public sector equivalent of a 401(k) — with a generous employer contribution (employer contributes an extra 7.25% of salary, with no employee contribution required to receive it). 

• Excellent State of Maryland benefits (individual, spouse and dependent) for healthcare, prescription drugs, dental, vision, term-life, accidental death and long-term disability.

• Tuition remission at the University of Maryland, College Park, and other University System of Maryland schools for faculty and their dependents. 

• Up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave.

• Additional benefit details here:

Physical Demands: N/A

Financial Disclosure Required

Department
JOUR-Philip Merrill College of Journalism

Worker Sub-Type
Faculty Regular

Salary Range
160,000-185,000