Sr. Editor, Social Storytelling
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a public benefit corporation owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Together, we’re at the center of a critical mission to create a lasting future for ambitious, engaging, and useful local journalism. We’re doing this, in part, by deepening our connection with the communities we serve. Our integrated digital and print platforms are the Philadelphia region’s largest media network. We’re passionate about building a sustainable model for indispensable local journalism, and we take pride in finding diverse, dynamic, and talented individuals to help push our team forward.
Senior Editor, Social Storytelling
The Philadelphia Inquirer is looking for a creative and digitally savvy journalist to join its Programming and Audience team, with a special focus on the Inquirer’s strategic approach to social platforms, its voice on social media, and the tactics used to unpack journalism for social audiences. This person will also be tasked with finding ways to leverage social media storytelling tactics on other digital distribution channels — both on and off of Inquirer.com. The Programming and Audience team works on the digital distribution of The Inquirer’s journalism and engagement initiatives with our readers. This position will help our journalism find the largest possible digital audience.
What You’ll Do
Help evolve and execute our daily and long term strategies for utilizing social media platforms, including our flagship Facebook, X, Instagram accounts as well as explore and grow our footprint on other platforms including TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Threads, Pinterest and more. Stay up to date on the latest social media trends, user habits, accessibility standards, and best practices.
Serve as a daily audience assigning editor for social — ensuring that our top news priorities of the day are suitably shared across our suite of platforms while also providing guidance to our team of social editors for what they should be focusing on each day across platforms.
Regularly communicate with our Newsroom Analytics Lead and our Director of Social Media & Syndication to analyze the data behind our social initiatives — with a particular focus on follower growth and post engagement — to determine success and decide when changes to our approaches need to be made.
Act as the design lead for social platforms. Convene and work with newsroom stakeholders to help The Inquirer achieve a clean, cohesive, and consistent visual style across social platforms for items like account profile images, social graphic designs, social video design, and more.
Contribute insight to the overall analysis of our publishing strategies and emerging audience trends. What are we doing? How is it working? Seek to connect the dots between how users are interacting with our content on social and how that translates to Inquirer.com.
Who We’re Looking For
The ideal candidate will have four-plus years working in a digital news environment and a strong knowledge of social media platforms and at least some familiarity with data analytics. We need somebody who can write with voice while exercising strong news judgment and creativity in finding ways to make a story resonate with people. We also are seeking someone who has a strong eye for detail when it comes to social media design. This role’s primary focus is on growing The Inquirer’s digital audience through the distribution of our journalism and helping ensure our social media workflows are informed by the evolving trends and habits in media consumption.
Prior experience publishing on branded social media accounts is a must, as is the ability to write with accuracy, proper grammar and an engaging tone.
At least some experience working with visual tools such as, but not limited to, Photoshop, Canva, Premiere, etc, is preferred.
Ability and interest in being able to understand not just what content performs well and resonates with people, but why it does so. Previous experience with digital analytics tools such as Google Analytics, ChartBeat, or Parse.ly.Ability to adapt as the news cycle demands and be able to work quickly and effectively in breaking news situations.
A strong communicator who can lead others, both within their own team and cross-functionally.
Someone who is eager to learn new things, who is organized, and who is passionate about serving vital information to audiences will succeed in this role.