I'm Looking for a Research Assistant

A previous occupant calls it "a dream job"

As you may know, I'll be rejoining The New York Times in the fall, resuming my column while still based in Oregon. So The Times is looking for an assistant to work with me and with Lydia Polgreen, an old friend and veteran journalist who is starting a Times column in the fall as well.

It’s a fantastic job for an aspiring journalist. I posted the Times job description and application -- it's here. If you know of a first-rate young journalist, pass on the link. The Times has decided the job will be based in New York (and I’ll be visiting New York regularly, too, from Oregon and around the world), and it is in the Times News Guild union.

It has been a privilege to work with a series of first-rate assistants over the last couple of decades, partner with them for a couple of years over my column, and then see them move on and rise in The Times or elsewhere. Liriel Higa, who was my assistant from 2014 to 2016 and now works for Twitter, calls it a “dream job” and wrote this lovely account at the end of her stint about what it entailed. Here’s an excerpt:

Liriel Higa with me in my office when she was my assistant. The photo and caption are from the article she wrote. Photo is by Audrey Hall.

Sometimes working for Nicholas Kristof means getting to meet people like Malala Yousafzai. Other times, it means repeatedly watching a grainy, covertly recorded video of chickens’ necks being slit to verify that the speed is, in fact, faster than two per second….

Another important part of my job is catching errors. Those range from misspellings to outdated figures to mischaracterizations and miscalculations. Trying to prevent mistakes is probably the most stressful part of the job — there are readers out there who make a sport of finding errors (they’re the ones who start their notes with “How the gray lady has fallen …”), and also experts in every field….

I know a claim is going to be challenging to fact-check when Nick gets out an envelope and a pencil. For example, here’s a doozy of a fact he had for a column about guns and refugees: “By my back-of-the-envelope calculations there’s maybe a 100-times greater likelihood that, say, a Floridian will turn out to be a murderer over a 10-year period than that a refugee will turn out to be a terrorist.” I try not to grumble about those kinds of calculations, because one of Nick’s pet peeves is that Americans are terrible at numeracy and I don’t want to prove his point.

Nick has a deep knowledge of world affairs and history, but when it comes to celebrities and pop culture, he’s pretty hopeless. Once a colleague asked about assassination attempts against government leaders and he immediately rattled off a couple obscure (to us) figures. On the other hand, he’s met A-list actors like Angelina Jolie and been clueless as to who they were.

Entering his expenses can sometimes be tedious, but the upside of his travels to extremely poor places is that his on-the-ground expenses are few and low. He’ll mostly subsist on protein bars (though he’ll also try more exotic fare like gigantic bugs), and sometimes his lodgings consist of a tent or a cot under the stars. Cost: $0.

So, again, if you know of someone who might be interested, forward the job announcement and application! Thanks.