About the Position
A producer role built around local curiosity, logistics, and story instincts.
Independent Heartland is seeking Associate Producers & Content Creators to help launch our Nebraska bureau and support original reporting across the state.
This role sits between research, field production, community sourcing, and digital storytelling. You will help identify story leads, prepare reporting packets, coordinate interviews, capture field material, and support social-first explainers tied to our larger investigations and video essays.
The strongest candidates will be curious, locally grounded, fast-moving, and comfortable working across formats. This is a builder role for people who want to help a newsroom find its first sources, rhythms, and audience.
What You'll Make
Research and field material that help the newsroom move from idea to finished story.
What This Is Not
Not desk-only research. Not generic social posting. Not passive production support.
This is hands-on producer work for a field-driven newsroom: finding leads, preparing interviews, organizing shoots, capturing material, and helping serious stories travel online.
Core Responsibilities
You will research, coordinate, capture, and help shape stories from the ground up.
- Develop story leads around housing, labor, agriculture, monopoly power, utilities, civic access, and local economic pressure points across Nebraska.
- Build research packets from public records, legislative documents, policy reports, datasets, interviews, local reporting, and community tips.
- Coordinate field logistics, including source outreach, interview scheduling, location planning, releases, travel details, and production notes.
- Assist on shoots by capturing b-roll, field audio, phone footage, notes, transcripts, social clips, and other production assets as needed.
- Draft short-form scripts, hooks, captions, and creator-style explainers that translate reporting into accessible digital formats.
- Track source details, fact-checking notes, documents, and production status so the editorial team can move quickly without losing accuracy.
Qualifications
We are looking for organized local storytellers with research discipline and digital instincts.
- 1+ year of experience in journalism, documentary production, social video, campus media, research, organizing communications, or creator-led storytelling.
- Strong writing and research instincts, with the ability to summarize dense information clearly and accurately.
- Comfort with basic field production tools, including phone capture, simple audio setups, shared documents, transcripts, and lightweight editing workflows.
- Demonstrated interest in Nebraska or Midwestern economic issues, working-class communities, agriculture, housing, labor, utilities, or local government.
- Highly organized and deadline-conscious, with the ability to manage outreach, notes, documents, and production details across multiple stories.
- Must reside in, or be willing to relocate to, the Omaha or Lincoln metropolitan area, with a valid driver's license for regular in-state field work.
Hiring & Audition Process
A transparent process with a paid finalist assignment.
Materials Review
We review your resume, writing samples, social or video work, research examples, and local story instincts.
Introductory Screening
Qualified candidates move into a screening call focused on availability, field comfort, research discipline, and editorial alignment.
Paid Producer Assignment
Top finalists are commissioned on a freelance contract basis to prepare a story memo, source map, or short production assignment at a flat project rate.
Final Selection
Selected producers may be offered recurring story assignments, contributor agreements, or a contract-to-hire launch-team role as the bureau scales.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
We recruit, employ, train, compensate, and promote regardless of race, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law. We strongly encourage members of historically underrepresented and marginalized communities to apply.
Important Notice
To protect your privacy and ensure the legitimacy of our hiring process, only respond to official communications from our team. We will never ask for sensitive financial information or any form of payment during recruitment.