The Oaklandside seeks a thoughtful, proactive, highly organized newsroom leader to bring excellent news sense, strong editing chops, and “air traffic control” to our small but mighty team of journalists serving Oakland, Ca.
You will be responsible for the day-to-day and sometimes minute-to-minute management of our news production. You’ll ensure that our story budget is full and reliable, our publishing rhythms are consistent, and our production workflows are efficient. You’ll collaborate closely with our editor-in-chief and news editor on setting the agenda for our news coverage, ensuring responsive and responsible reporting aligned with our newsroom’s founding values. You’ll keep a “bird’s eye view” on how our reporting appears across our various platforms to ensure optimal, cohesive presentation. You’ll lead key team meetings, develop and track our annual budget, and be a voice in charting our newsroom’s growth.
News judgment is crucial to this job; you’ll think deeply and speak persuasively about what we’re covering, why, and the best ways to do it. You’ll directly supervise and edit roughly half of our newsroom’s reporters and a small pool of freelancers in breaking, daily, and enterprise reporting. You’ll need proven experience in top editing, line editing, and copyediting, along with comfort and experience in delivering feedback to editors, reporters, and producers on their work. You’ll lead in developing and tracking performance goals across our editorial team.
The managing editor will, at times, work closely with managers across the organization, such as our directors of community journalism, audience, events, people, sponsorship, and development, requiring effective communication and project management skills. You’ll represent and advocate for our newsroom and editorial integrity in cross-departmental meetings, being called on to think strategically about our audience development and growth, digital presence, staff and newsroom policies, and current and future partnerships.
You’ll lead on recruiting and mentoring early-career journalists in our newsroom through partnerships with outside programs that support these professionals (such as Report for America). You’ll need to work equally well with seasoned journalists, those just entering the field, and colleagues with diverse personal and professional backgrounds.
We asked The Oaklandside’s reporters and editors about an ideal candidate for this position. “Calm, cool, and collected,” they said, with a commitment to fostering collaborative, supportive relationships with reporters. Decisiveness is a must, along with solid experience in seeking and incorporating input and feedback. Significant daily digital news experience in Oakland or a city with similar political, demographic, and socioeconomic dynamics is a big plus.
The salary range for this position is $95,000 to $110,000. Candidates must be able to work from downtown Oakland three days per week.
What you’ll do
- Own our daily story budget, monitoring for accuracy, timeliness, and balance and proactively solving problems
- Evaluate and iteratively improve our existing publishing workflows
- Assign and edit stories in coordination with reporters and editors
- Lead on developing and tracking performance objectives for the Oaklandside editorial team
- Drive special coverage and longer term projects such as election planning, collaborations with other Cityside newsrooms or outside outlets, and story packages
- Work with our editor-in-chief and news editor to ensure that our journalism aligns with our founding values and ongoing feedback from readers through initiatives like our Mission Metrics program
- Share input on editorial and professional development training needs, and help plan special staff meetings and retreats
- Help to build a culture of feedback in the newsroom, leading on collecting and responding to feedback on our editorial operations
- Long-term strategic planning with the EIC and news editor, including evaluating and iterating our editorial vision and our editorial priorities, audience growth, newsroom expansion, and more
Required qualifications
- 6+ years in a daily digital newsroom with at least 4 years of full-time experience managing journalists and editing breaking, daily, and enterprise stories
- Proven ability to think deeply about journalistic projects, uphold editorial standards, and edit and coach journalists through any part of the pitching, reporting, writing, editing, or production process
- Track record of thinking and working creatively and collaboratively with journalists, both internally (including editors, visual journalists, audience directors, data journalists, and reporters) and externally (in the case of collaborations or partnerships with other newsrooms)
- Excellent verbal and written interpersonal communication
- Ability to maintain both empathy and journalistic rigor in fast-paced, distributed environments
- Experience with newsroom content management systems
- Ability to work with individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives
- An interest in continuously working to be a better editor and manager
- A desire to teach aforementioned concepts and/or mentor based on individual or team needs
- Must be authorized to work in the United States
- Must be able to commute to our office in downtown Oakland
We’re especially interested in candidates who…
- Have local daily news experience in a digital-first newsroom
- Have investigative editing experience
- Have significant experience working with visual journalists
- Have experience reporting and/or editing in Oakland or a similarly sized, diverse city
- Have significant reporting experience
- Have worked with Newspack or another WordPress CMS
- Have experience editing across a range of formats and platforms, especially data journalism, social-first storytelling, and in-person events
Benefits and Compensation
- $1,000 a year in professional development stipends
- Medical, dental and vision coverage
- 401(k) retirement plan with a 4% company match
- 20 paid personal days
- 12 paid sick days
- 13 paid holidays
- 5 additional paid days for an end-of-the-year break between Christmas Day and New Year
- Up to six months of paid family and/or caregiver leave
- Life insurance coverage
About The Oaklandside
The Oaklandside is a nonprofit local journalism outlet for Oakland that reaches over 250,000 readers a month. We launched in June 2020 to amplify community voices, share information resources, and investigate systems, not just symptoms. Our seed funding came from a $1.5 million grant from the Google News Initiative, and we’re supported by a healthy mix of reader donations, foundation grants, and underwriting.
Within a year of our launch, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded us the honor of best community journalism among print and online outlets across Northern California. We’re currently a small but mighty team of 10—three editors, six reporters, and one photojournalist—and we partner with other local media organizations to expand the reach of our reporting.
We’re powered by the Cityside Journalism Initiative, a mission-driven nonprofit organization whose goal is to pioneer new forms of civic journalism, launch news platforms in communities underserved by local journalism, and offer hope and optimism for the future of local news.
