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Editor, Milwaukee neighborhoods reporting initiative
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is seeking a creative and public-service-driven editor to lead our new neighborhoods initiative, a grant-funded pilot project launching in early 2025.
This editor will lead a team that will pioneer a listen-first approach to community journalism in Wisconsin’s largest newsroom. With unprecedented grant support from major foundations in the community, this team will launch in three Milwaukee neighborhoods. In addition to three neighborhood-specific reporters, the team will include a photojournalist. Our aim is to add an engagement specialist as additional grant funding becomes available.
We need an editor who is savvy, organized and passionate, with an innovative spirit and mindset - someone who is ready to listen, help reporters make connections in neighborhoods and shape an effort to create distinctive journalism. This team will elevate neighborhood voices by positioning its journalists as helper figures who will inform and empower residents, amplify their voices and explore solutions to the problems they see. And will have the opportunity to partner with journalists across our award-winning newsroom.
We’re looking for a thoughtful, risk-taking leader who is motivated by the idea of launching something new, is determined to make it sustainable, and is inspired by the chance to create a new community-minded journalism model for newsrooms everywhere.
Responsibilities
We expect this leader’s work to fulfill five elements we see as fundamental to the success of the neighborhoods reporting initiative:
- Listening. Journalists will hold regular office hours and listening sessions to understand what neighbors need and want, and proactively reach out to residents where they are.
- Conversing: Reporters will foster ongoing dialogue with residents to earn their trust. We will publish stories from the neighborhoods in print and online - with no paywall - but reporters will also circulate the information they gather in other networks neighbors are using, such as Facebook groups, Next Door, WhatsApp, Reddit, Signal or even church or school newsletters.
- Reporting: Stories will focus on solutions and prioritize residents as experts in how things work – or don’t work. Stories may range from how-to guides that help neighbors navigate bureaucracies to short narratives of accomplishments or trends in everyday challenges – some of which may surface topics worthy of full-scale investigations.
- Convening: When residents, stakeholders, policy makers and public officials come together, real change can occur. We envision hosting office hours, neighborhood chats, topic-driven summits, or semi-annual reports to the community.
- Empowering: This transformational model will platform people who traditionally have been excluded or misrepresented in the media by elevating their lived experiences. We aim to hire interns from the neighborhoods, with the hope they will pursue journalism careers. We want to offer stipends to residents who develop commentaries for opinion pages.
Other Responsibilities
- Make story and photo/video assignments and edit copy to meet deadlines.
- Manage staff personnel, interns and neighborhood contributors.
- Organize listening sessions and community events in collaboration with other newsroom editors.
- Create benchmarks and measurements for work in the pilot, including stories, multimedia, listening sessions and community events.
- Coordinate internship opportunities and resident-contributed work.
- Communicate progress and challenges and provide regular updates to the community and stakeholders in collaboration with newsroom editors.
- Foster open, transparent and on-going communication with neighborhood residents and leaders.
- Work collaboratively within the newsroom and community, putting a premium on teamwork and problem-solving.
- Help identify and execute a strategy to deliver content to neighbors.This could range from utilizing newsletters and commonly used apps to traditional flyers.
- Assist neighborhood residents in connecting with opportunities to contribute opinion pieces or take part in events, with a constant aim of elevating community voices in multiple ways and formats.
Requirements
- Bachelor's or master's degree in communications, journalism or related field or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- A minimum 3-to-5 years of leadership experience in management, or a start-up or community-based organization, preferably in a media or information-based role. While journalism is at the heart of this project, all relevant experience doesn’t have to come from a news organization. We encourage individuals with relevant experience in start-up management, neighborhood needs assessments or community convening roles to apply.
- A keen understanding of strategy and how to set goals and execute them.
- Able to be independent and self-directed as well as collaborative. The right leader will be able to balance the need for the team to forge its own identity and to work with colleagues across the newsroom.
- Ability to manage and prioritize work under demanding deadlines as well as create new workflows and analytics.
- Good verbal and written communication skills.
- Experience turning listening and feedback into actionable steps. This could range from making a story assignment based on tips, expanding story sourcing lists or holding a community event inspired by a string of comments heard during a listening session.
- Skills in communicating progress and challenges as well as providing regular updates to the community and stakeholders in collaboration with other newsroom editors.
- Comfort frequently working outside of the office in neighborhood locations with a variety of diverse stakeholders and personalities.
Leading this three-year pilot project and making this neighborhood coverage team a permanent and sustainable part of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel requires an editor who is able to hit the ground running in a brand new role. If you don’t have every skill listed, please don’t rule yourself out – let’s talk about whether you would be the right fit.
Application Instructions
About
We are eager to learn more about you and how you fit this role. When you apply, don’t limit your upload to a resume; show us what you’ve done. To do so, put together a single document file that includes the following, in this order:
- Your resume – one to two pages.
- A cover letter that outlines how you would approach the job.
It is important that these items be assembled into a single document and uploaded in PDF format. Completing these steps will ensure that your application receives the highest consideration.
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