NEWSWELL, Audience and Membership Director

NEWSWELL, Audience and Membership Director

At NEWSWELL, we help newsrooms become nonprofit and for-community. We provide strategic guidance, innovative solutions and wrap-around operations so local journalists can focus on local news, and newsrooms can thrive. We partner with Arizona State University, the nation’s most innovative 10 years in a row, to offer game-changing ideas, tools, and research.

We transform local news to help communities and democracy thrive.

NEWSWELL seeks applications for the position of Audience and Membership Director. This director will be an experienced leader comfortable with hands-on work who can serve as a key thought partner to local editors and the senior NEWSWELL leadership team in a role that supports an innovative growth strategy across the organization.

As Audience and Membership Director, you will play a crucial role in identifying and serving key audiences, fostering community engagement, growing our membership base, expanding distribution methods, innovating approaches to acquiring and engaging audiences, and ensuring sustainable revenue streams to support our mission-driven journalism.

You will lead efforts to cultivate relationships with current and prospective members, oversee membership and audience campaigns, and strategize innovative approaches to increase and serve our local communities. The ideal candidate brings deep knowledge of and passion for advancing local journalism, an innovative and problem-solving mindset, expertise in audience development, success in change management, demonstrated financial acumen and a belief that local journalism can be a positive force in our communities and democracy.

As we create a new model for transforming local news, we have identified four key drivers of our success:

• Listening: Our organizational culture of listening enables NEWSWELL to more deeply understand barriers to trust and consumption of local news and help newsrooms build stronger relationships within their communities.

• Learning: Our relentless drive to strengthen our expertise and knowledge in all areas of community concerns, local journalism and audience needs enables our newsrooms to create engaging content and products in a complex and evolving field.

• Empowerment: Our commitment to innovation and inclusion maximizes the talent and potential of all team members while building success and a sense of belonging.

• Passion: Our unwavering belief in the promise of local journalism and its ability to help communities and democracy thrive fuels our desire to reinvent its future.

What you'll do:

• Help attract, grow, and retain audiences for news and information in NEWSWELL markets, with the goal of gaining trust, earning loyalty and building community.

• Utilize audience engagement, marketing, and product management skills to help develop strategic plans for audience and membership growth and retention.

• Research, propose, test, and implement new audience engagement tactics; celebrate wins and scale across properties.

• Work with partners and newsrooms to plan and execute membership campaigns across NEWSWELL email, social media, and websites; capitalize on major news moments along with cultural events, as opportunities to grow audience and membership.

• Track key audience and performance metrics, use analytics to guide strategy.

• Help develop a membership identity and branding strategy, fulfill all member benefits in a timely manner.

• Coordinate opportunities to bring members and newsrooms together.

• Produce regular audience analytics and membership reports to share key performance metrics and qualitative feedback with our newsrooms, central team, and funders.

• Conduct audience and member surveys and listening sessions.

• Work with partners in the Cronkite School and across ASU to share learnings, conduct experiments, and collaborate on initiatives that move us forward.

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What you'll need:

• Ability to use audience analytics and research to inform content strategies.

• Experience with audience and membership growth tactics and campaigns.

• Excitement about stepping into a brand-new role in a new organization, which often means being the first one to do something in the organization.

• Familiarity with email and marketing best practices.

• Familiarity with social media content, analytics, and campaign best practices.

• Familiarity with Salesforce CRM or willing to learn.

• Passion for journalism and a commitment to the mission and values of our nonprofit organization.

Relevant qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree.

• At least 10 years’ experience working in audience development or community management (it does not need to have been in a newsroom).

• Demonstrated organizational skills such as project management, strategic planning, developing KPIs and evaluating progress.

• Any equivalent combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge, skills and abilities have been achieved.

ASU Enterprise Partners is an Equal Opportunity Employer