I have no idea what possibly-summonable research person means, but now I imagined a Lvl 3 wizard spell "Summon Researcher" where a demon in lab coat appears and answers every question with "I will reply in 2 weeks, if I find statistically significant studies" and it sounds mildly amusing. I know you meant news research but it is funnier this way :) BTW congrats!

Due to the repeated exposure effect in marketing, it might be a good idea to follow up on John Oliver pieces (or other popular pieces that are potentially high leverage) with easily shareable via social networks infographics. Examples: Civil Asset Forfeiture, Criminal Justice Reform, Municipal Violations, etc. The nice things about topics like these is that they have some headline stats that are inflammatory and attention getting. Like how badly the US is doing relative to insert developing country or how many people are getting screwed over. This should align with 538's incentives since creating these while the iron is still hot makes them more shareable.

Congratulations!

Also you should remember that LW has a fairly wide knowledge base. If you're looking for a place to get started on a complex topic, I'll bet that this site would be a good place to ask a few initial questions and establish a broad research outline.

This is great for the bragging thread.

You should feel free to post on LessWrong requests for help in writing future articles.