Managing Editor

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
Annual salary of $95,000-110,000 per year commensurate experience

About The Oaklandside

The Oaklandside is a nonprofit local journalism outlet for Oakland that reaches over 200,000 readers a month. We launched in June 2020 to amplify community voices, share information resources, and investigate systems, not just symptoms. In our first year of operation, we’ve blown past all of the traffic, audience engagement, and revenue goals we developed in consultation with industry experts in local news startups. 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.

We built this newsroom after conducting an in-depth listening tour across Oakland to develop our founding values, and we are piloting an innovative program to work with community members to hold ourselves accountable to our mission. 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 eight—three editors, four 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 with core funding from the American Journalism Project 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.