Senior Editor, Travel, Outdoors, and Service

Texas Monthly has an opening for a senior editor who will be responsible for editing most of Texas Monthly’s online travel and outdoors coverage, as well as its Dining Guide and other service-focused packages. Stories about Texas’s land, flora, and fauna are often among the website’s most-read stories, and this senior editor will be responsible for assigning stories that inform and delight readers with the literary flair and vivid narrative that Texas Monthly is known for. This senior editor will also be assigning service packages that take creative, voice-driven approaches to authoritatively informing readers about all that the state has to offer.

This full-time staff position, which reports to the executive editor for culture, lifestyle, and service, is based in Austin, Texas. It offers stable employment at a nationally renowned media company that has a culture defined by core values of integrity, honesty, diligence, enthusiasm, and collegiality, as well as the highest journalistic standards and an abiding sense of service to our millions of readers both in and outside of Texas. This position also offers generous benefits, including a comprehensive health-insurance plan, 401(k) matching, profit sharing, and eligibility for performance-based bonuses. Compensation is competitive and negotiable.

Job responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Conceiving and executing a vision for Texas Monthly’s coverage of travel and the outdoors that combines Texas Monthly’s legacy of writerly voice and compelling narratives with a strong sense of service for its audience
Editing 5–7 stories per month about travel and the outdoors
Editing Texas Monthly’s Dining Guide every month, including managing its freelance contributors and brainstorming initiatives to improve its digital presence and grow its audience
Conceptualizing, organizing, and editing at least 2 additional ambitious service packages a year
Developing quality story ideas and shepherding them from inception to production
Making freelance assignments and developing new freelance talent
Crafting headlines, deks, and all manner of display type, for an array of platforms (print, web, social)

Successful candidates will possess the following skills/abilities:

Precise line editing
The ability to edit stories for clarity, precision, fairness, voice, and structure
The ability to establish and meet deadlines
Effective and professional management of freelancers and staffers
An enthusiasm for collaboration
High levels of organization
Clear and effective communication with many parties, including other editors, copy editors, fact-checkers, and designers
An appreciation for the varied geography of a sprawling, fast-growing state and a desire to surprise, delight, and inform a diverse audience

Education/experience:

At least seven years’ experience editing, in print or online
An intimate knowledge of Texas’s travel landscape or the curiosity and enthusiasm required to quickly immerse yourself in it
A set of Texas-based freelance writer contacts and publicist relationships is preferred but not required