Job Description

Director Of Experimentation And Projects

The Dallas Morning News has an exciting new role for a dynamic leader to drive innovation and organization in our award-winning newsroom.

The Director of Experimentation and Projects will have two major responsibilities:

1. Managing experiments in storytelling and audience building
2. Acting as project manager for long-term projects, large-scale events, and complex ongoing stories

The experimentation will derive from intense collaboration with Audience leaders and company stakeholders to plan short-term sprints testing concepts to expand our reach. Recent experiments include juicing weather coverage, adding Statbeat to high school football coverage, and launching a LinkedIn newsletter.

The ideal candidate will be an enthusiastic digital advocate who is eager to experiment with new strategies to help connect our journalism with the right readers.

As project manager, this journalist will be integral in the storytelling process, collaborating across departments to develop and implement strategies for special, multi-faceted, groundbreaking projects. They also help identify opportunities for innovation and experimentation.

This senior newsroom leader will create the project roadmap from inception to post-publication partnering with assignment editors and visual stakeholders. They must manage the needs of all contributors and set deadlines that allow for the best work. They must advocate for our readers throughout the process.

Candidates should be able to lead analytically driven post-mortems to draw takeaways and areas for improvement that can be carried forward to future projects.

The Director of Experimentation and Projects should be an exceptional journalist, and a proven leader who is highly organized, digitally adept, and a natural collaborator. This editor will be part of the newsroom leadership team and will report to the Executive Editor. Newsroom project management experience is preferred.

This editor will directly manage teams of reporters.

The Dallas Morning News believes a collaborative and inclusive work environment is essential to a thriving workplace for all. We are in search of a diverse group of candidates.

Responsibilities:

• Develop, launch and manage experiments to build audience and expand storytelling, working in collaboration with Audience leaders and company stakeholders
• Monitor analytics for innovation opportunities and work with editors to suggest approaches for improvement
• Work with editors to evolve and shape coverage to deepen engagement with our digital audience
• Guide collaborative or complex journalistic investigations and projects from concept to publication, ensuring they stay on schedule, within budget, and meet quality standards
• Facilitate team communication, manage resources, identify risks, and maintain project integrity without dictating journalistic content
• Provide day-to-day leadership and supervision to assigned staff, ensuring operational goals and objectives are met effectively and efficiently
• Responsible for all aspects of employee management, including recruitment, interviewing, selection, onboarding, and retention
• Conduct regular performance evaluations; provide constructive feedback and coaching to support employee development and accountability
• Administer progressive discipline and counseling as needed, in alignment with company policies and procedures
• Oversee scheduling, workload distribution, and delegation of responsibilities to ensure balanced team performance and productivity

Requirements:

• Five years of experience in editing and/or copy editing
• Bachelor's degree in journalism or related field

Skills:

• Expert editor, communicator, multitasker
• Adapts quickly to changing technologies and workflows
• Juggles multiple assignments and completes work by deadline
• Communicates clearly and effectively with colleagues
• Motivator and positive influence on bringing people together to reach a goal
• Strong organizational and leadership skills to manage multifaceted projects and new digital product development
• Ability to identify challenges and develop contingency plans to address unexpected issues, ensuring a project's quality and integrity are maintained
• Good news judgment, accuracy, speed, grammatical precision, a flair for headlines
• Proven ability to plan, work in advance and coordinate production

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