Head of Audience and Membership

Job Description

The Head of Audience and Membership will develop and implement audience-first strategies to grow, engage, and sustain a vibrant community of readers and supporters. Partnering closely with the newsroom and other organizational leaders, they will design data-informed approaches to enhance audience engagement, optimize distribution across platforms, and drive membership growth and retention. They will explore innovative tools and techniques to deepen the connection between the newsroom and the diverse communities it serves, ensuring local journalism remains relevant, impactful, and accessible.

This leader will also play a key role in shaping the organization’s broader strategies to achieve financial sustainability and independence. As a founding member of the team, they will help build the infrastructure and culture necessary to support fast-paced growth while staying rooted in the values of inclusivity, equity, and service to the public.

This is a unique opportunity for someone who believes deeply in the power of local journalism to foster civic engagement and community resilience. With the support of the American Journalism Project’s business team and Startup Studio, the Head of Audience and Membership will join the forefront of a growing movement to revitalize local news in Los Angeles for underserved audiences.

Key responsibilities

Goal-setting and metrics:

• Establishes and owns key performance indicators (KPIs) for growth and engagement for newsletters, social, search engine optimization (SEO), and other channels, as well as membership
• Develop strategies to understand reader and community engagement habits; track, target, and grow loyal reader engagement and participation in our events and programming
• Builds insightful and actionable community engagement reports and recommends actions based on insights
• Uses audience data, in consultation with audience consultants, to ensure  understanding across the organization and support strategic adjustments for engagement with the newsrooms 
• Provides key recommendations and actions that further the newsroom’s goal of serving target audiences and ensuring strong civic engagement

Audience growth and engagement:

• Creates and executes search and social strategies to grow audience
• Optimizes newsroom social media copy on a timely and strategic basis; works with social producer(s) and writes and posts stories to social platforms as needed
• Ensures proper execution of SEO workflows for the newsroom, including training, documentation, and support
• Acts as newsroom point person for optimizing headlines for article pages, social media, and SEO
• Monitors search trends and local happenings to help inform coverage, making use of the organization’s social networks and tools such as Google Search Console
• Provide coaching to staff about best practices on digital/social platforms
• Seeks out and manages potential third-party channels for growth, such as Apple News, Flipboard, Pocket, etc.

Newsletters:

• Owns newsletter strategy; works with social producer and editors to manage the production and execution of our editorial newsletter portfolio and targeted campaigns
• Oversees email list growth and develops strategies to grow it
• Owns newsletter engagement KPIs and reports regularly on progress

Membership growth and engagement:

• Develops and executes strategies (targeted campaigns, consistent stewardship) to grow membership in partnership, with support from membership consultancy
• Develops effective messaging for small donor campaigns, and manages onsite and newsletter calls-to-action
• Experiments with product and messaging strategies that convert loyal readers into members and one-time donors into recurring members
• Measures and reports on metrics key to conversion and retention success, and develop strategies to increase effectiveness

Job Requirements

• Strong full-time experience in a digital newsroom
• A desire to innovate, problem-solve, and launch new initiatives
• Strong editorial judgment
• Deep familiarity with social media platform usage, functions, and trends, particularly in Los Angeles
• Experience managing professional social accounts, and ideally established brands
• Ability/experience to work in partnership with journalists
• A basic understanding of search engine optimization
• Experience running newsletters and knowledge of Active Campaign and similar email service providers and customer relationship management tools a plus

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