We are a team of software engineers in The New York Times newsroom, seeking to apply software engineering as a newsroom craft to:
- Bring our readers stories they can’t get anywhere else
- Help the wider newsroom see and pursue stories we wouldn’t otherwise be able to
- Make the seemingly impossible story possible
We build tools for reporters, editors and designers, as well as special projects for our readers. We run experiments as well as guide, train and support the use of these tools.
We work in tight collaboration with interactive groups that handle data, graphics, A.I. and special design presentations, as well as other teams across the newsroom and company.
In our work, we look to drive editorial impact, drive innovation, operate responsibly and sustainably, and collaborate generously.
The Team
- Alastair Coote (github)
- Amy Hughes (github)
- Andrew Chavez (github)
- Andrew Fischer (github)
- Annie Daniel (github)
- Ben Koski (github)
- Dan Simmons-Ritchie (github)
- Emma Baker (github)
- Jaymin Patel (github)
- Mike Andre (github)
- Neil Berg (github)
- Rachel Shorey (github)
- Will Houp (github)
Newsgathering and reporting tools to help our newsroom drill deeper into beats and make unexpected connections, including:
- Scalable document research for enterprise and breaking-news stories backed by documents
- The secure, encrypted and anonymous tip-collection system at nytimes.com/tips
- Scaling for A.I. in the newsroom, in partnership with A.I. Initiatives
- An internal campaign finance database feeding stories and graphics
- Continued support since 2011 for the The Guantánamo Docket, one of the longest-lived public news applications
- A full suite of data acquisition tools
Self-service newsroom tools: We pitch and develop software that allows reporters and editors to publish highly interactive work on their own
- Quizzes, including the News Quiz, The Hunt, and the John Hodgman advice quiz
- Storage and retrieval of reader-input data, powering a wide variety of projects including news games, WordleBot, poetry memorization, art appreciation and place-saving within an article
- Reader submission collection that contributes to reporting and standalone pieces
- Document publication to get primary source material to readers
Scalable data pipelines to support major event coverage including:
Our goal as a team is continued experimentation and innovation. Some of these projects are continually maintained by INT, some are creative one-offs, others eventually "graduate" to become core components of the CMS.
- Modern video player powering video-heavy stories
- Live Activities showing election results on the iOS lock screen
- Calendar integrations
- Push notifications
- AMP
- Live Polling
- Tap Stories
- COVID data acquisition and publication
The Interactive News team at The New York Times is always looking to connect with creative, interdisciplinary thinkers with strong technical backgrounds.
If you're interested, please fill out our contact form. You may receive a note from us occasionally.
- 2026: How The Times Is Digging Into Millions of Pages of Epstein Files
- 2021: Presentation at Tufts University's DISC program about our Coronavirus Trackers, from data acquistion (INT & more) to visuals (Graphics)
- 2021: Public Service award from the Pulitzer board (Poynter's write-up)
- 2020-2021: Tracking Covid-19 From Hundreds of Sources, One Extracted Record at a Time which details INT's role in our Coronavirus Trackers during the pandemic
- 2020: 2020 Philip Meyer (data) journalism award from by I.R.E. and the broader "news nerd" community
- 2019: Hacking our Hiring article series in OpenNews's Source, about how Interactive News conducts and evolves our hiring process
- 2019: How We Sped Through 900 Pages of Cohen Documents in Under 10 Minutes
- NiemanLab, 2019: The New York Times has released an open-source tool to let you manage all your internal knowledge more easily
- NiemanLab, 2018: With its new Olympics texting experiment, the Times is saying goodbye to SMS, hello to personalization
- 2017: Developing New Live Coverage Story Formats
- 2016: I Tracked and Tried to Outsmart ‘Hamilton’ Scalpers — With 341 Lines of Code
- NiemanLab, 2015: The New York Times liveblogged last night’s GOP debate directly from Slack
- Poynter, 2012: New York Times news apps team ventures into product development with Olympics syndication
- Mizzou, 2011: The Times techie
- ISOJ, 2010: The Journalist as Programmer: A Case Study of The New York Times Interactive News Technology Department
- 2009: Talk to the Newsroom: Interactive News Collaborative
- NYMag, 2009: The New Journalism: Goosing the Gray Lady