- About
- FAQ
- Our process
- Keeping the lights on
- Working here
- Open positions
- Pitch a story
- Public Resources
- Awards
- Contact us
- Content Studio
- Team
The Pudding explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. By wielding original datasets, primary research, and interactivity, we try to thoroughly explore complex topics.
Visual essays are an emerging form of journalism. Some of the most complex, debated topics get lost in “too long; didn’t read” 10,000-word articles. Visual storytelling makes ideas more accessible—or so goes the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
At The Pudding, our goal is to advance public discourse and avoid media echo chambers. We’re not chasing current events or clickbait. We choose topics where visuals both entertain and inform. This means that we invest in research and ignore news cycle noise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here at The Pudding, we get asked our fair share of questions. Maybe you can find the answer to yours on our FAQ page.
How we do it
We're six full-time journalist-engineers who operate as a collective rather than hierarchical team.
Much of our work is done autonomously, with individuals choosing their essays and owning the whole story, from research to code. Each team member can do every step: research and reporting, data analysis, design, writing, and code.
One luxury that separates us from traditional newsrooms is our approach to publishing urgency. There are no deadlines because we are not tied to news events. With breaking news, it's difficult to gamble on weird, ambitious ideas if they must be published. No one will take on risky, creative projects when they're staring at a deadline.
So we experiment, a lot. The creative process feels more like workshopping a movie script than critiquing a bar chart. Consequently, many of our ideas are killed during production, but we wouldn’t have it any other way! It means we’re trying unproven, never-done-before things.
We're also trying to advance the craft. Visual journalism is still in its infancy. We don't have an established pattern language found in traditional reporting. Sometimes we'll attempt an unfamiliar visual approach—not because it's guaranteed to work, but because we won’t know until we try. Rarely do organizations have the liberty to take such risks, yet we're small enough to experiment in the pursuit of quality.
Keeping the lights on
The Pudding is financially viable, bootstrapped, and profitable (intentionally).
There are no ads. There are no subscription walls. There is no venture capital artificially keeping our lights on. Instead, it's our sister-visualization agency, Polygraph.
Want a full rundown of the relationship between The Pudding and Polygraph? Check out our FAQ here.
Working here
Some of the reasons why you might like it here:
1. This is a making-it-up-as-we-go, building-the-plane-in-the-air type of organization. Look to us if you want a small, startup feel that’s buzzing with possibility. This is different than other newsrooms that have hierarchies and an established "how-we-do-things," decades-old process.
2. You want to be involved in building something new. Yes, we publish essays, yet plenty of energy goes into perfecting a creative process that's still in its infancy. As part of a small team, your opinion matters a lot.
3. You crave autonomy rather than taking direction. There are plenty of organizations where you can slot into a well-oiled, historically prestigious machine. You'll get an editor, a process, and story assignments. But that also comes with baggage, particularly the creeping conservatism that often accompanies success (i.e., you were told your idea isn’t “accessible”). This is pretty much the opposite: what you make emerges from your own burning desires—ideas gestating in the back of your head for months (or years!) that you’ve never had the latitude to explore.
4. You're over making noise. We want you to pick projects that don't live and die by the news cycle. You want your work to have a multi-year lifespan. The Pudding underwrites your research interests (go read all the books!) and gives you time (and financial stability) to explore them.
5. Creativity is not a solitary endeavor. If you’re working solo, we’ll give you an editor, or design resources, or coding help. Whatever it takes to execute your vision. What matters is that we help you understand what readers will feel and keep you motivated. We’ll be your sanity check for whether the music you're playing is just in your head or actually on the page.
6. Craft matters. We are building tools that make visual storytelling easier. Yet instead of making something for everyone, our tools begin with one group of users: ourselves. Building for general consumer adoption is a noble pursuit, but there’s something special that happens when a toolmaker builds something for their own creative ambitions.
7. You’re keen on building a following. Most of us started doing this work “on the side,” often on a personal blog. You may have experience wielding your own voice and the thrill of finding readers. We don’t want that to be lost by “getting hired” somewhere. Each person needs to have an identity that they'd otherwise cultivate independently.
8. We calibrate our salaries against interactive journalist and data visualization roles. We recognize that our skill sets are not the same as prose-based journalists, and we ensure that folks joining our mission aren’t taking a paycut from the tech world.
Salary Levels
Title | Compensation |
Intern | $20 / hour |
Jr. Journalist-Engineer | $70k |
Journalist-Engineer | $82k |
Sr. Journalist-Engineer | $100k |
Editor | $115k |
We also bring on ad-hoc editorial assistants to help with data processing, data analysis, and research tasks.
Open positions
Interested in hearing about future positions and internships? Sign up for our email newsletter that will notify you of new career opportunities and open roles at The Pudding here.
Pitch a story
We are always looking for interesting story ideas and freelancers to work with. Each quarter, we commission a couple of essays (compensation details below). Here are some guiding principles for what we think make a good story:
The idea is worthy of public discourse. Would people debate the premise of the idea for 20 minutes? What assumptions does it challenge?
There’s a deeper truth. What does the story reveal (even if it’s buried deep in the essay)? Does the reader leave the essay feeling differently?
You’re showing, not telling. Visuals make your argument more accessible and less complex than a thousand-word essay.
What to Send
- Headline: The hook, describes the story in a few words
- Summary: The elevator pitch, a few sentences explaining the idea
- Proof: Does this have legs? Depending on where you are in the process, this can be in the form of data analysis, storyboards, prototypes, etc.
- Assistance: What piece(s) you might need help with from us (data analysis, writing, design, front-end development)
- Portfolio: Link to your portfolio or relevant work and experience
If you have a story that you’re excited about that meets our criteria, hit us up at pitches@pudding.cool with the stuff above. Need some inspiration? Check out our team idea backlog for a jumping off point.
Compensation
We pay $5,000+ for end-to-end work on an essay. If we collaborate by providing some assistance in a non-editor capacity (e.g., we do the design), we will lower the compensation accordingly.
Public Resources
At The Pudding, we do our best to work in public. That means that wherever possible, we try to make our process, our code, and our data available to anyone who has an interest in using it. Here are some things that you may find useful:
- Datasets created for our stories
- Our YouTube channel which contains screen casts of our team coding, having conversations about a story’s process, and more
- Backlog of our story ideas
Awards
- Peabody for our digital journalism in 2017
- SND Gold and Silver medals for our collective portfolio of work in 2018
- Stats Excellence in Journalism award from the Royal Statistical Society
- Information is Beautiful Awards: one gold, two silvers, and three bronze awards
- Breakthroughs in Storytelling Award from the Columbia University School of the Arts' Digital Storytelling Lab for the Structure of Stand-Up Comedy
- Data journalism website of the year from the 2019 Data Journalism Awards
- General Excellence in Online Journalism from the 2019 Online Journalism Awards.
Contact Us
For business opportunities, including sponsored content, reach out to business@pudding.cool. Pitch us a story via pitches@pudding.cool. For press enquiries, get in touch at press@pudding.cool. For all other inquiries or comments, drop us a line at sup@pudding.cool.
Content Studio
Interested in wielding The Pudding's power for your brand? Our team creates custom, white-labeled content via our award-winning visualization studio, Polygraph.
Send us an email at hi@polygraph.studio to find out more. Get a full explanation of the relationship between The Pudding and Polygraph via our FAQ here.