Director Digital News

Job Description

OVERVIEW

Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success.

The Digital News Director will have a leadership profile in NPR’s newsroom overseeing much of how we commission and present news on the internet for audiences every day.

They will directly oversee a team of talented journalists pursuing breaking news, tightening copy, and programming various digital surfaces for NPR from our homepage and apps to our social accounts. We are looking for candidates who have a sophisticated sense of applying analytics and metric-informed thinking to their news judgement sensibilities.

A primary part of the daily responsibilities for this role will be coordination and communication with other teams within our newsroom. NPR is fortunate to have many talented teams of journalists feeding so many different platforms. Much of the work of the Digital News Director will be working collaboratively with these groups to refine how NPR signature journalism and storytelling is reflected in our daily digital news products: from our homepage to our social feeds, from liveblogs to newsletters, from digital listening experiences in the NPR One app or smart speakers and Carplay.

We are looking for someone with experience commissioning and editing content from a broad scope of coverage areas. In addition to our own staff reporters, NPR regularly partners with member stations and their talented reporters drawn from hundreds of local communities around the United States. Furthering the ambitions of the network is a key opportunity for this role.

NPR also has international correspondents in over a dozen countries. We have hundreds of talented journalists working as hosts, editors and producers for our flagship broadcast magazine shows, newscasts and podcasts. All are working relentlessly pursuing stories 24-7 for an organization that puts out premier linear broadcast products. Internally, we are adapting our tooling and strategies to feed the internet more regularly as well. We need more editorial leaders to develop the vision of how best to do that.

RESPONSIBILITIES
• Oversee Digital Presentation of NPR journalism on a day-to-day basis and develop the voice/tone of how that journalism should adapt as our organization continues to serve more audiences on the internet, in all forms, not just broadcast.
• Commission journalism, daily. We’re looking for an editor who understands and has experience with the fact that some news events are straightforward to plan for and some news gathering teams are well positioned to respond to them. And sometimes, you need to scramble some plans.
• Work among the leadership team of NPR to define our strategic approach as a publisher of internet news content and civic-minded storytelling.
• Provide daily cross-platform analytics intelligence to newsroom leadership to inform day-to-day editorial priorities.
• Develop insights for the newsroom to uncover trends and insights in key areas that influence NPR and Member station content creation and distribution strategy. How can our workflows improve? How should we tell our stories?
• Help NPR further deepen the relationships with its audiences based on understanding what is engaging with readers and listeners.
• Develop the next generation of NPR’s newsroom leaders. We are looking for someone who is comfortable developing skills for those they directly manage and those with whom they work with more broadly.
• Cultivate a culture of inclusion and experimentation.
• Supervise direct reports, including preparing their regular performance reviews, and making effective recommendations regarding any hiring, promotion, and discipline for these positions.

QUALIFICATIONS

EDUCATION: Minimum education experience, required or preferred. (Ex: Bachelor's degree or equivalent in work experience)

REQUIRED SKILLS
• 7-20 years of journalism experience working with multiple platforms and coverage areas.
• 5+ years of supervisory and managerial experience leading teams through major stories, and complex coverage areas.
• Ability to lead and collaborate in a highly matrixed organization is essential
• Strong news judgement and demonstrated editing experience.
• Ability to handle multiple and complex projects simultaneously under stringent timeframes and changing priorities/conditions
• Proven experience working with editorial teams to apply analytics data to drive content strategy, production, planning, and distribution.
• Self-starter with the ability to work independently as well as in a collaborative team environment.

PREFERRED SKILLS
• A familiarity with editing for podcasts or audio broadcast. We don’t need a podcast producer or audio engineer. We already have a lot of great ones and we want someone who would feel comfortable working with them.
• A love of the internet, at it’s best.
• An interest in solving for the internet, as it's … more challenged.
• A sophisticated understanding of non-content-mill SEO
• Good headline writing capabilities.
• An intense loyalty to RSS readers, newsletter, TikTok or some other means of preferred internet consumption.
• An appreciation for the mission of public media and NPR’s place in that ecosystem.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rveqz7-3-142-173-227-42 in your application.