Editorial Director, Local, Thrillist

Job Description

We're looking for an Editorial Director, Local to join Thrillist's editorial department within Vox Media. As the leader of the Local team, you'll oversee our cities coverage, which includes more than a dozen markets. You'll be based in our NYC office or remote and report to the Editor in Chief. This role will manage Local Cities Editors, Local Staff Writers, and will be critical in recruiting and hiring for the team in the future.

Thrillist celebrates life at the intersection of culture and experience, inspiring people to pursue spontaneity through food, drink, and travel.

Thrillist is part of Vox Media, the leading modern media company. We guide our audience from discovery to obsession. We inspire essential conversations about what's now, what's next, and what's possible.

As a community of journalists and storytellers, business professionals, creators and technologists, we believe it is a moral and business imperative to amplify voices: to cultivate diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout our organization and media. This applies to our candidates, our teams, our storytelling, our creative work, and our platforms, products, and partnerships.

WHAT YOU'LL DO
• Manage a team of editors and encourage them to let their creativity drive their stories
• Strategize with SEO, social media, and email promotions teams to find the best ways to package and promote all local stories
• Manage and recruit a large roster of freelance writers, coaching them to deliver consistently excellent, on-brand stories that meet all internal best practices
• Manage a monthly freelance budget
• Maintain an expertise in covering local lifestyle/cultural moments and experiences, whether that's a roundup of things to do in Chicago this weekend or a first look at an exciting new museum exhibit in San Diego
• Find creative new ways to marry food & drink and experience coverage in a way that clearly distinguishes Thrillist from its sister brands like Eater and Punch, as well as competing sites
• Manage a robust publishing workflow and calendar with strict deadlines and publish dates
• Combine your knowledge of national trends and local cultural moments with SEO data and insights to create stories that tell Thrillist readers what they need to know, and when they need to know it
• Use Google Analytics, Chartbeat, and other customized data reports to draw meaningful insights about the work you do, the audience you speak to, and to develop strategies for growing our reach; communicate with other editors to identify and share trends and best practices
• Collaborate with your peers from other Thrillist verticals to build robust content packages throughout the year and ways to interconnect and link coverage across the site every day

WHO YOU ARE
• Has a record of success in producing high-quality lifestyle content for digital media outlets and is a proven people manager capable of shaping writers and editors into top-tier talent
• 5 + years in an editor role at a digital publisher
• Minimum 3 years of experience managing people
• Experience building, managing and coaching an editorial team
• Have a broad depth of knowledge about what's great to eat, drink, and do across major US cities
• Be an enthusiastic champion of regionality and national trends
• Excellent management skills to inspire and support a large team
• Strong writer and editor who can communicate about things to do, regional travel, and food & drink experiences in everyday language, free of cliches
• Experience working with freelancers in a professional capacity- assigning stories, receiving and approving pitches, and providing feedback and edits to push stories to new heights, and create more efficient working relationships
• Be able to juggle multiple projects at once
• Extensive knowledge of SEO, and how to promote stories via email newsletters and social media

Bonus points for:
• Knowledge or experience working with social video producers a plus, but not required

If you think you have what it takes, but don't meet every single point in our job posting, please apply with a cover letter to let us know how you believe you can bring your unique skills to the Vox Media team or get in touch! We would love to have a chat and see if you could be a great addition to our team. We've hired chefs who became editors, DJs who became UX designers, and sommeliers who became writers.

WHERE YOU'LL WORK

This job is remote. We're dedicated to the health and wellbeing of all of our employees, and when we reopen, will require everyone who works from one of our offices to be fully-vaccinated against COVID-19. Employees with approved religious or medical exemptions may be subject to additional safety requirements, such as submitting to regular COVID-19 testing and/or wearing a face covering in our offices.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-ro5142-3-145-196-87-42 in your application.