Black Culture Team Leader and Editor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is seeking a newsroom leader to grow and guide coverage of Black culture and significantly extend our current Unapologetically Atlanta content niche.
This will be an important role in the most exciting newsroom in America. We are investing to expand our audience, influence and mission across Atlanta, Georgia, the South and beyond.
"Atlanta Influences Everything" is a popular local slogan and dead-on description of the vibrant, Black community that shapes life and pop culture here and across the nation. Atlanta is a hub for Black entrepreneurs and professionals, artists, musicians, chefs, and young activists and influencers eager to reshape America.
The AJC's expansion into this area of journalism will be a key part of our reinvention from a storied local newspaper to a modern media company expanding its mission across Atlanta, Georgia, the South and elsewhere.
The ideal candidate will be an experienced content and team leader who has a proven record of driving engaging and essential coverage. This leader must have vision and passion for listening to and serving readers
The role will be at the manager or senior manager level, , depending on experience and qualifications, and will work with senior AJC leadership to establish the scope and vision of coverage and the goals and impacts that will determine success in driving subscriptions and loyalty. This leader will also be responsible for building a team and establishing roles and responsibilities.
Currently, Unapologetically Atlanta is served in a newsletter and events; future platforms could include a podcast, videos and other formats depending on vision and plans developed by this editor and senior leaders.
Key job roles and tasks:
Supervise day-to-day coverage and short and long-range plans and execution of a specific area of journalism or collection of areas of journalism.

• Lead the strategy and execution for a specified area of content, ensuring all audiences are well-served with content.
• Keep up with the news of the team's coverage area by reading, monitoring external data and consultation with others and sets the agenda through plans communicated to the team.
• Create or direct the creation of content plans for ongoing coverage, special events and breaking news. Create or direct the creation of a "budget" of stories for collaborative use across the newsroom, communicate and coordinate plans to colleagues

• Evaluate and edit stories/articles to ensure news value, clarity, readability, comprehensiveness, accuracy, balance and fairness.

Set the goals and vision for the relevant coverage area and designs systems and processes to ensure those goals and visions are carried out.

• Develop a high level of expertise in the coverage area of the team though reader research, audience analytics, government reports, study of coverage from other organizations
• Establish short-range and long-range coverage plans through various avenues including brainstorming meetings, story meetings with reporters and consultation with leadership colleagues

• Act on and incorporate knowledge from audience metrics and research into the plan.
• Identify opportunities for process improvements.

Collaborate with other newsroom senior editors and managers to calibrate and coordinate high-level changes in resources, priorities and plans.

• Effectively communicate upcoming plans and challenges through written and verbal communication and meetings

• Adjust priorities and resources according to changing circumstances, sharing resources with other teams when necessary
• Assist with identifying development opportunities for newsroom at large

Coach and performance-manage a multi-disciplined, high-achieving team to ever improving results, managing productivity and quality of contributions to AJC journalism. Recruit and, in consultation with senior leadership, hire when openings on the team occur.

• Create an environment focused on continuous learning and improvement, fostering close-knit collaboration.
• Inspire non-traditional thinking and risk-taking ideas and improvements; inspire team to reach higher for themselves and to participate in newsroom continuous improvement

• Evaluate the work of team members and identify performance gaps. Address gaps through coaching and inspiration and, when necessary, more formal performance improvement plans
• Identify and act on development opportunities for team members
• Fully embrace the AJC newsroom commitment to diversity and inclusion through recruiting, hiring and development practices
• Assist in recruitment to find quality talent and take a leading role on hiring practices and decisions for team openings

Other duties that may vary seasonally or with news cycle, including participation in special project teams, task forces and other activities that contribute to wider leadership of the business enterprise. Other duties may include broad leadership of profile writing and advance obituary writing across the newsroom

• Maintain and cultivate relationships with AJC, CEI and other partners.
• Identify key community partners and opportunities advance our mission and further relationships with diverse communities
• Maintain flexibility and embrace growth opportunities outside of core responsibilities

The responsibilities above are intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by employees assigned to this job. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required for this position.
QUALIFICATIONS

• 6+ years of relevant experience with at least 1 year of experience in a leadership role;

• 8+ years of relevant experience with at least 3 in leadership required for senior manager.

Depending on skills and experience a candidate may qualify for either manager or sr. Manager level.

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in related field is preferred. (May substitute years of experience for degree.)
• Demonstrated strong news judgment and excellent editing ability.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams to follow standards and execute large-scale news initiatives.
• Strong ability to organize, analyze, interpret, and disseminate information.

• Strong communication and presentation skills.
• Track record of effectively partnering with different teams across newsrooms and the entire organization.
• Excellent interpersonal and collaborative skills to work effectively across groups.
• Comfortable setting direction and drawing insight from multiple, conflicting data sources.

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