Description

The Senior Health Reporter will produce original enterprise, primarily English-language coverage on health issues affecting the Bay Area’s Latino and indigenous Mayan immigrants. 

Your coverage will center immigrant voices and use a systems and solutions lens to explore root causes and levers for change on issues such as healthcare access, mental, maternal, and environmental health, and food security, among others. You will incorporate El Tímpano’s robust community engagement methods to center the experiences of those most impacted. Our goal is to produce journalism that helps Bay Area communities better understand these complex issues, fosters solutions-oriented conversations, and equips residents with the information they need to make decisions and take action.

El Tímpano is not an ordinary newsroom. For eight years, we have earned recognition and inspired emulation across the field of local news for our investment in listening, developing trust, and designing approaches to reporting in collaboration with the Latino and Mayan immigrants we cover and serve. Community engagement is core to how we work and systems thinking guides our coverage. Our reporters will be trained in and expected to utilize community engagement strategies to surface story ideas and sources, collect novel data, and ensure their reporting centers and reaches those most impacted.  

While El Tímpano is a remote-first workplace, this position will require in-person reporting in the communities El Tímpano covers and serves, and will be based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Occasional evening and weekend hours may be required. El Tímpano is fiscally sponsored by Mission Edge San Diego and all employees are employees of Mission Edge. 

Duties & Responsibilities

• Pitch, report and produce feature stories (in English) on news deadlines for digital platforms. Your enterprise coverage will provide depth, context, an analysis of systems and solutions, and compelling storytelling
• Develop expertise and local sources on the health beat
• Work closely with El Tímpano’s service journalism team to ensure that our reporting is not just about Latino and Mayan immigrants, but also shaped and informed by them, and produces actionable news and information for them
• Participate in collaborations with reporters and editors from local and national newsrooms for story amplification and/or republication
• Serve as secondary author of El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch email newsletter, producing 1-2 newsletters/month
• Occasionally speak at events, in community, and to other media outlets about your reporting
• Take part in occasional in-person outreach
• Other programmatic, editorial, or administrative activities as they emerge to support the needs of a growing non-profit media organization

Requirements

You are a great fit if you…

• Are a bilingual journalist (Spanish-English), with 5+ years’ experience, and have personal or professional familiarity with Latino immigrant communities
• Demonstrate a sensitive approach to telling stories with, for, and about vulnerable and underserved communities
• Are relentless in your pursuit of justice, accountability and a complex understanding of social inequities through your reporting
• Have strong writing, reporting and interviewing skills, as well as excellent news judgment, and a proven ability to identify and originate stories, report accurately, meet deadlines, and deliver solid reporting
• Have experience using public documents, online research, social media, and other reporting methods to report stories, and are excited about using community engagement tactics
• Are able to work simultaneously on short- and long-term projects
• Have excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication, including the ability to communicate respectfully and inclusively in diverse environments with colleagues, community members, and external peers
• Thrive in a start-up environment where you are expected to learn and iterate as you go, collaborate with a team and adapt as the organization grows and evolves
• Are passionate about El Tímpano’s mission of informing, engaging and amplifying the voices of Latino and Mayan immigrants

Preferred

• Relevant reporting experience on health issues, including healthcare policy
• Are familiar with the Bay Area, its local issues, and its Latino immigrant communities

The duties listed above are intended only as illustrations of the various types of work that may be performed. The omission of specific statements of duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related or a logical assignment to the position.

Some great candidates may not check all the boxes above, and may have valuable skills not included here. If that’s you, please don’t hesitate to apply and tell us why you would thrive in this role. If you have any questions in advance of applying for this position, we encourage you to reach out to El Tímpano’s Managing Editor, Daffodil Altan, [email protected], to address your questions via email or a brief call. 

To Apply

Click here to submit your application by August 7, 2026. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.