Field Reporter

Date Posted	October 05, 2026
Industry	Digital Media
Specialty	Politics
Required Education	High School Diploma
Job Status	Freelance
Salary	$1,000 per week

Description:

About the job

The Barbed Wire is a social-first Texas newsroom whose short video reaches hundreds of thousands of Texans a week on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Bluesky. For the 2026 midterms we're launching Barbed Wire Dispatch: bilingual news briefs from the road in five South Texas congressional districts (TX-15, TX-23, TX-28, TX-34, TX-35).

As a field reporter, you will coordinate, plan, produce, write, report, and shoot, working with our news director, Mario Leal. We cover every candidate on the ballot and hold them all to the same standard.

What you'll deliver each week

• Two or three story packages, 70–80 seconds each, in English and Spanish, built for vertical short-form video. Each week mixes these story types:

• Reports from busy polling sites

• Interviews with candidates

• Conversations with local leaders, creators and community figures about the issues

• Clear voting instructions: dates, locations, ID, mail ballots

• Quick street interviews with residents

• One creator co-production: lunch or coffee with a local creator about the community and the races for Congress, governor and Senate, filmed for a longer-form cut.

• Capture b-roll: both video and stills, of local landmarks, significant buildings, road signs, polling sites and daily life, uploaded with location and date.

What we're looking for

• Fluent, natural on camera in both English and Spanish

• Lives in, or knows, South Texas and its communities

• Can shoot clean vertical video and sound on a phone with a lav mic

• A reliable car and a valid driver's license; this territory is large

• Previous news, documentary or digital video reporting experience strongly preferred

• Accuracy first: you'll verify facts, get releases, and take edits from the news director

• Familiar with long-form and short-form investigative broadcast news

• Juggle multiple stories and deliverables simultaneously

Skills

• Must be fluent in English and Spanish (reading, writing and speaking)

• Creates multimedia content for digital and social media (various platforms)

• Shoots, writes, translates and edits stories

• Research, write and copy edit long form and short form stories for digital and social media platforms

• Schedules, coordinates, organizes and conducts interviews

• Develops a network of contacts establishing access to exclusive stories

• Assist in establishing sources, developing enterprise news investigations, building and maintaining a story/pitch list

• Works directly with editors on story gathering and creation

• Write, edit and report on pre-recorded interviews and b-roll

Independence

You can't have worked for, volunteered for, donated to, or publicly endorsed any candidate, party or committee in these races this cycle. During the contract, you don't post political endorsements.

Compensation

This is a freelance position that pays $1,000 per week. In addition, we cover milage and accomidations while on the road.

Timeline

Apply ASAP. Interviews run Oct 7–9, and the first shoots are Oct 12–13. Program runs October through November.

How to apply

Send a resume to hello@thebarbedwire.com. Please include at least two links to video you've reported on camera.