APPLY HERE: https://santacruzlocal.org/jobs/job-posting-managing-editor/application/
Deadline to apply is 12 p.m. PT Monday, June 2.
Location: Hybrid. This role is based in Santa Cruz County, California and starts in mid-July. You can work from our office in Downtown Santa Cruz and remotely from within the Santa Cruz County area.
Pay / benefits: $76,000 to $80,000, health care reimbursement, retirement benefits, paid federal holidays, five weeks per year of paid company holiday plus paid flexible time off.
A bit about us: Santa Cruz Local is a nonprofit local news organization that serves residents of Santa Cruz County and the Pajaro Valley. Local journalists founded Santa Cruz Local in 2019 to give residents an unbiased, fair and accurate source of local news and information. In 2023, we launched Noticias Watsonville, Spanish-language audio news on WhatsApp. Now, we’re launching News for Students. Read our strategic plan.
We strive to grow civic engagement through deep, fair and accurate reporting about local government, housing, health, transportation, the environment and other big issues in Santa Cruz County. We lift up voices not normally heard by local government or local media.
We want to:
- Inform residents with responsive, useful civic news.
- Connect residents with basic needs through our relevant, timely and accurate information guides.
- Show residents how to participate in local government and that they can impact decisions.
- Push leaders on residents’ priorities and hold them accountable.
The challenge: To grow civic engagement, we need to grow our loyal audience and hone our editorial strategy. We need to produce great journalism — and ensure that people are reading it.
The job opportunity: This is a full-time role responsible for the full lifespan of our stories, from budgetlines and assignments to delivery and engagement. Your job doesn’t end when we publish; part of your work is ensuring the right people are engaging with our stories. You will lead our English-language news and work closely with our Spanish-language and News for Students teams.
This position has two goals:
- Produce fair and accurate local journalism that increases civic engagement, holds power to account and connects residents with basic needs.
- Help grow our loyal audience through relevant, useful and timely news products.
Responsibilities:
- Manage a small and mighty team of talented and driven staff and freelance reporters and journalists.
- Assign stories and work with our Assistant Editor to ensure the fairness, accuracy and relevance of our English-language website stories and newsletters.
- Edit stories, from dailies to longer-term enterprise projects. Guide complex and ambitious investigative and public service reporting projects.
- Lead editorial strategy to ensure that products serve the information needs of our audiences. Work with our Community Engagement Manager to build a system to continually listen and respond to Santa Cruz County and Pajaro Valley residents in our journalism.
- Collaborate with our Spanish team, News for Students team, and events and fundraising team to grow our loyal audience.
- Spearhead a culture of rigorous optimization and experimentation to grow our audience.
- Represent our newsroom at events and correspond with readers and residents who have questions or feedback about our journalism.
You would have a leadership role in our young startup and you would interact with people across the organization. An ideal candidate would be ready to learn, test new things, figure out our audience funnel and collaborate.
Santa Cruz Local employees are encouraged to take initiative, push new ideas, disagree, and offer opinions and alternative solutions. You would have a strong voice in shaping the company’s long-term direction.
Our company is growing and changing quickly. An ideal candidate would be a thought partner to the CEO — and would want to be a leader on our team and be ready to offer ideas.
You would report to the CEO.
Requirements:
- Employee management.
- Experience with producing or managing news products.
- Reporting and editing experience on a daily deadline.
- Strong analytical skills and experience with data-driven decision making.
- A learning and problem-solving mindset.
- Able to listen and communicate with people of different cultural backgrounds.
- You must be 18 or older.
Our ideal candidate is:
- Excited about civic engagement and holding power to account.
- An experienced coach, teacher or trainer of journalism.
- Ambitious but also values work/life balance.
- Committed to nonpartisan, civic news that informs, not inflames, public dialogue.
- Curious, collaborative and adaptable.
- Eager to listen to residents, learn what’s working in journalism to serve communities not traditionally served, and challenge journalistic norms.
- Open to try new ways to grow our loyal audience and will take a methodical approach to experimentation.
- A thorough copyeditor who can revise and condense complex information to a wide audience.
- Local with 2+ years of professional experience in Santa Cruz County or the Pajaro Valley in journalism, government or adjacent fields.
- Able to speak, read and write in Spanish.
- Able to lead complex, systematic, weeks-long projects and hit deadlines.
Bonus points if you:
- Have professional experience with audience growth experimentation, investigative editing, social media or photo editing.
- Are familiar with data journalism, data collection, analysis and/or visualization.
- Have news clips that are based on community listening.
If you worry you’re not qualified, please give it a shot and apply anyway. You do not need a journalism degree to apply.
Timeline: The deadline to apply is 12 p.m. PT Monday, June 2. We plan to interview top candidates on Zoom in mid-June. We will pay interviewees $50 for their time. We will update all applicants with the status of their application.
We plan to make hiring decisions by early July. This role starts in mid July.
Questions? Email, call or text Santa Cruz Local CEO/Co-founder Kara Meyberg Guzman, [email protected] or 831-291-3456.