Meet Dan, City Bureau’s New Software Developer for the Documenters Platform

This investigative reporter turned coder is joining our team to build and maintain the tech that fuels our participatory media programs.

By Navjot Heer

We are excited to welcome Dan to the team as City Bureau’s new Software Developer for the Documenters Platform!

Dan Simmons-Ritchie brings years of experience as an investigative reporter, local government journalist and software engineer. In this conversation with Documenters Network Coordinator Navjot Heer, Dan shares about his experience growing up in New Zealand, migration to the U.S. and how that move informs his understanding of place and the importance of place-based reporting and the Documenters Network.

We asked Dan to share a little bit about his experiences, his background and what he’s bringing to the role. Here are some of the highlights, edited for length and clarity.

What is your connection to place and where you call home?

My connection to place is interesting. My mom is from Oregon and my dad is from New Zealand and I was born and raised in New Zealand. I moved to the US when I was 23, kind of chasing adventure and planning to work as a reporter. I'd been a newspaper reporter in New Zealand and I really, really wanted to work in U.S. newspapers. I grew up in New Zealand and only visited the US once when I was five, but always had this affinity for the US given my family connection. Since coming to the US, in a somewhat funny way, I now identify really strongly with my New Zealand roots. Maybe that’s just the nature of moving away from home. I feel really proud of New Zealand. Like a lot of countries, it has a pretty tragic colonial past but there's also a lot the country has done to address that policy-wise that I'm really proud of. I feel that sense of place much more strongly now that I'm in the US.

I'm currently living in Austin. Since I've been in the US, I’ve had a pretty funny sense of place because I moved so much in my career as a newspaper reporter here. I have lived in Oregon, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and now Austin, Texas. I'm a big fan of Austin and I'm still trying to figure out if it's home for the long term.

You are an investigative reporter turned software developer. Tell me about your path through these roles.

It's a story somewhat similar to other folks who end up working as web or software developers in newsrooms. I was an investigative reporter and increasingly was getting into data journalism and needing to analyze bigger and bigger data sets. And once you get into really large datasets, you really need to start coding. And so, I started getting into coding and I really fell in love with it. I found that I basically was finding more reasons to code in my reporting life. I spent a huge amount of time outside my work hours learning about software engineering, new languages, and just coding. I increasingly realized that was the work I really wanted to do, so over a series of years I got deeper into data journalism, then data visualizations. Eventually I was able to parlay that into full stack web development, which is essentially what I do now at City Bureau.

In past roles, I worked at Spotlight PA in Pennsylvania and the Houston Chronicle here in Texas. I produced a bunch of data visualizations and web apps for both outlets that I’m really proud of. I most recently worked for the Texas Tribune, mostly on their content management system which is the behind-the-scenes system where reporters write and publish their stories before they go live on the website. It sounds super nerdy, but it was a joy to work on. I have always loved building out features for the kind of CMS that I would have wanted when I was a reporter. Having come from that world, it was really fun to think: how can I improve this system from a reporter's perspective?

What drew you to building with the Documenters Network? How do you approach your work with the growing network?

It’s kind of a cliche to say it at this point but it’s true, local journalism is in crisis. To me, City Bureau’s Documenters Network is one of the most interesting and exciting experiments to resuscitate local journalism right now.

In some ways, the concept is pretty simple. We incubate tiny journalism labs and newsrooms across the country. We provide our partners with a tech platform that makes it easy for them to pay regular folks in a community – “Documenters” – to attend and take notes on local government meetings and publish those notes online. Those are meetings that might otherwise go completely uncovered. They’re basically filling a gap left by the demise of local newspapers – like the ones I used to work for.

It’s amazing what the Network has achieved, how quickly it's growing, and how many communities across the country want to join the Network. We actually have more demand than we can keep up with. It's really inspiring. I think that's what fuels me. I want to see a healthy media ecosystem. I want to see local government meetings covered. To borrow the Washington Post’s slogan, I think it’s really true that “democracy dies in darkness”.

What is your work grounded in?

My job with the Documenters Network is basically to write code and build tech systems that make it possible for the Documenters program to work across our Network. My goal is basically the same as it has been in any of my former developer roles, which is to build systems that do what they need to do, run efficiently, and are easy to maintain in the long term. Those are the pillars that I really work from. I generally try to follow good software engineering principles in the work I do. I want to provide the best tech and user experience we can to all our partners across the country.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I really am just impressed and empowered by what the Documenters Network is and the hard work of my team, our partners and the Documenters themselves. When I was an early-career reporter, my focus – my bread and butter – was covering local governments. I basically started as a small town reporter covering city hall and county governments before I became an investigative reporter. I loved it. Over the years, I watched so many papers I worked for – or my friends worked for – cut back on local meeting coverage because of budget constraints. I watched entire beats get cut. Every meeting that isn't covered by a reporter or doesn’t have a community member in attendance is a loss for democracy. You know, it's really sad and it’s really bad. And again, the Documenters Network is a really innovative solution to that problem that can achieve a lot with a relatively small budget, which is what impresses me the most about the whole project.

To connect with Dan, feel free to reach out at dan@citybureau.org