Summary

Tarbell supports independent journalism covering AI. Since 2022, we’ve placed journalists at TIME, MIT Tech Review, The Information, and supported another to write for the New Yorker. 

We're hiring for three exciting roles to grow our organisation:

• Fellowship Manager ($75-100k): a skilled project manager to own & expand our Tarbell Fellowship.
• Operations Manager / Associate ($55-100k): implement & improve Tarbell’s administrative & operational processes.
• Special Projects Manager ($75-100k): lead one of our existing programmes or launch an entirely new initiative.

About Tarbell

Tarbell supports independent journalism covering AI. Our mission is to build a global community of expert journalists covering artificial intelligence.

We run three programmes:

• Tarbell Fellowship: Our flagship programme provides early career journalists with training, a stipend of up to $50,000, and a 9-month placement at a major newsroom. 2024 placements include MIT Technology Review, TIME, Euractiv, The Information, and Lawfare.
• Journalists-in-residence: We provide senior writers with funding to pursue longer investigations, explore entrepreneurial projects, and educate themselves on artificial intelligence. To date, we've supported Shakeel Hashim and Nathaniel Popper.
• Tarbell Grants (coming soon): We’ll provide awards of $1k-$15k for impactful reporting on artificial intelligence and its impacts.

Fellowship Manager

Key details

• Deadline: Apply by Sunday July 21, 2024
• Start date: September 2024 (flexible)
• Hours: 40/week (flexible)
• Location: London (preferred) / Remote
• Reporting to: Cillian Crosson (Executive Director)
• Compensation: $75,000 - $100,000

Responsibilities

As Fellowship Manager, you'll be responsible for managing and continually improving the Tarbell Fellowship.

Responsibilities might include:

• Programme managing the Tarbell Fellowship. You’ll be responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Fellowship. This includes setting goals, tracking progress towards them, and generally ensuring that all work is executed on schedule to a high level.
• Matching Tarbell Fellows with placements at top news organisations. In 2024, we successfully placed Fellows at MIT Tech Review, TIME, Lawfare, The Information, Euractiv, and Ars Technica. You’ll maintain strong relationships with existing host outlets and forge partnerships with new placement organisations.
• Attracting talented and aspiring tech journalists to apply for the Tarbell Fellowship. You’ll coordinate our marketing strategy
• Selecting a strong cohort of early career journalists from an initial pool of >1,000 candidates. You’ll run a multi-stage application process: reviewing applications, blind-grading writing samples, and interviewing candidates to identify the most promising journalists. 
• Improve our 10-week AI Journalism Fundamentals course by adding new modules that better prepare Tarbell Fellows for their newsroom placements.
• Facilitate training sessions on topics in AI and / or key journalism skills.
• Lead a team. As the programme expands, we anticipate that you will recruit, develop, and manage a small team.

What we are looking for

You might be a particularly good fit for this role if you are:

• Organised and competent at project management. We are looking for someone with experience managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders. You should feel confident with goal-tracking, system-building, and keeping teams on track to meet ambitious deadlines.
• A strong understanding of AI, or the ability to learn this quickly. You understand basic concepts in machine learning (e.g. transformers, gradient descent), are familiar with various governance topics (e.g. responsible scaling policies, compute governance, capabilities evaluations), and can identify the key players & factions in the AI landscape.
• Highly autonomous and proactive. Successful candidates will proactively identify pain points and inefficiencies in our current process and set out to fix them.
• An excellent communicator, both written and verbal. We are looking for someone who can build partnerships with news outlets and convey complex ideas clearly.

• Journalism experience. We’re especially interested in hiring a Fellowship Manager with 3+ years of newsroom experience. While not a fixed requirement, a solid understanding of the industry will be a strong plus.

   

Operations Manager / Associate

Key details

• Deadline: Apply by Sunday July 21, 2024
• Start date: September 2024 (flexible)
• Hours: 40/week (flexible)
• Location: London (preferred) / Remote
• Reporting to: Cillian Crosson (Executive Director)
• Compensation:
  • Operations Manager: $75,000 - $100,000
  • Operations Associate: $55,000 - $75,000

Responsibilities

As Operations Manager, you'll be responsible for implementing and improving Tarbell’s operational and administrative processes.

Responsibilities might include:

• Manage HR & legal processes within the organisation. You'll develop employee contracts, design staff policies, and manage onboarding for new employees.
• Grant administration. Coordinating with placement organisations and grant recipients on outgoings grants. You'll conduct relevant due diligence and disburse grants in a timely manner.
• Financial management of Tarbell. This includes organisational budgeting, expenditure forecasting, and ensuring compliance with regulations and accounting standards.
• Organising Tarbell events, especially our annual Oxford Summit. You'll select a venue, liaise with speakers, book travel & accommodation, and generally ensure that invited journalists have an outstanding experience.
• Communications. Curating a monthly Tarbell newsletter for 1,000+ subscribers and running our social media channels. You'll promote the work of Tarbell Fellows and help attract journalists that we can support via our programmes.

What we are looking for

You might be a particularly good fit for this role if you are:

• Experienced in operations roles. For the Operations Manager role, we are primarily interested in candidates with at least 5 years of relevant experience. For the Operations Associate role, we are open to candidates with much less experience.
• Organised and competent at project management. We are looking for someone with experience managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders. You should feel confident with goal-tracking, system-building, and keeping teams on track to meet ambitious deadlines.
• Excellent at prioritising tasks. You thrive in work environments with high task volumes and are adept at switching contexts. Experience working in a small team / startup environment is desirable but not essential.
• Excited about optimising systems and eliminating inefficiencies. You likely have a systems mindset, stepping back from individual tasks to envision the overall system.
• Highly autonomous and proactive. You can excel with relatively little supervision almost immediately. We’re excited to find a proactive self-starter to join our team.
• Calm and resilient. You remain focused and solution-oriented in fast-paced situations.
• Passionate about reducing risks from artificial intelligence. Ideally, you will have a strong understanding of AI, or the ability to learn this quickly (e.g. you can explain concepts like gradient descent, responsible scaling practices, and dangerous capabilities evaluations).
• Ideally, familiarity with newsrooms and journalism. While not a fixed requirement, a solid understanding of the journalism industry will be a strong plus.

Special Projects Manager

Key details

• Deadline:  Apply by Sunday July 21, 2024
• Start date: September 2024 (flexible)
• Hours: 40/week (flexible)
• Location: London (preferred) / Remote
• Reporting to: Cillian Crosson (Executive Director)
• Compensation: $75,000 - $100,000

Responsibilities

As Special Projects Manager, you'll either lead one of our existing programmes or launch an entirely new initiative that contributes to our mission. 

Projects could include:

• Expanding our journalists-in-residence programme, recruiting senior writers that we can support to pursue AI journalism.
• Building out a training programme designed to upskill established reporters and editors on artificial intelligence and its potential impacts.
• Organising an annual conference for AI journalists.

What we are looking for

You might be a particularly good fit for this role if you are:

• Organised and competent at project management. We are looking for someone with experience managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders. You should feel confident with goal-tracking, system-building, and keeping teams on track to meet ambitious deadlines.
• A strong understanding of AI, or the ability to learn this quickly. You understand basic concepts in machine learning (e.g. transformers, gradient descent), are familiar with various governance topics (e.g. responsible scaling policies, compute governance, capabilities evaluations), and can identify the key players & factions in the AI landscape.
• Highly autonomous and proactive. Successful candidates will proactively identify pain points and inefficiencies in our current process and set out to fix them.
• An excellent communicator, both written and verbal. We are looking for someone who can build partnerships with news outlets and convey complex ideas clearly.
• Journalism experience. We’re especially interested in hiring a Fellowship Manager with 3+ years of newsroom experience. While not a fixed requirement, a solid understanding of the industry will be a strong plus.

We encourage speculative applications for all roles; we expect many strong candidates will not meet all of the criteria listed here.