Address
Form of workTexas Weekend Editor
Job Description
Hearst Newspapers (HNP) is seeking a Texas-based news director to manage the weekend news operation for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News.
This is a unique position that carries full-coverage responsibility and requires exceptional news judgment, as well as an ability to work under pressure with colleagues in Houston, San Antonio and the Austin bureau on breaking news, trending stories and utility content. The successful candidate will make coverage decisions for our weekend operation and will work with the audience team to run HoustonChronicle.com and ExpressNews.com to reach audiences through platforms including the homepage, news apps, newsletters, and social media. Experience editing and making audience-informed coverage decisions is critical.
The Texas Weekend News Director will work four 10-hour shifts (Thursday-Sunday). During the week, the successful candidate will work with the leadership teams in Houston and San Antonio to plan weekend coverage and repromotion efforts for our newsrooms' best journalism. The News Director should have experience assigning urgent, distinct and exclusive journalism and should be comfortable editing stories from the serious to the lighthearted. The ideal candidate will also have experience with live coverage, optimizing that coverage for search, with a grip on knowing when readers are best served with live-updating coverage.
The Responsibilities
- Take the lead role in coordinating breaking news coverage on the weekend, working collaboratively with the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News leadership teams, weekend reporters and audience teams.
- Identify the most important and relevant angles of the day's top stories; assign and edit stories; and coordinate promotion with the audience teams.
- Be immediately responsive to breaking news to keep the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News competitive on the biggest stories of the moment locally and across Texas.
- Stay in contact with the audience teams and newsroom leadership to coordinate coverage on the weekends and for Monday.
- Think creatively about unique reporting and story angles for a digital audience.
What will it take to be successful?
The successful candidate will be a collaborative team leader with an expert grasp on content planning. They will be able to deliver clear guidance to journalists and efficiently juggle tasks to create unique and impactful stories that cultivate new audiences and engage our subscribers.
Ideal candidates will be able to showcase one or more of the following; we do not expect candidates to be proficient in every area:
- 10 or more years in journalism with at least two years experience as an editor, audience lead or team leader.
- Experience leading breaking news or trending topics team is preferred.
- A collaborative self-starter who can organize, prioritize and work under pressure.
- A headline master, quickly able to distill a story into its most shareable elements.
- Experience monitoring and using Google Trends to inform content strategy.
- Ability to use analytics to help guide story selection and pivoting based on performance.
- Be organized, with experience using content-planning software such as Airtable a plus.
- Ability to work 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday (10-hour shifts).
- Ability to speak Spanish a plus.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in journalism preferred.
- Comfort with constantly evolving technology, and ability to adapt quickly and bring others along.
About Hearst Newspapers:
With 2,500 employees across the nation, HNP encompasses a network of 24 daily and 52 weekly publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and Albany Times Union, several top digital-only news and lifestyle sites, marketing services businesses, and entertainment businesses such as King Features Syndicate.
At HNP, we are investing in new and innovative ways to tell stories - growing newsrooms, diversifying tools, evolving platforms - to support the millions of people who trust us each month to help them make decisions, take action and be inspired.
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