Starting salary: $50,000/year
Location: Open

Open Campus is hiring an audience engagement manager to attract new readers, better understand our existing ones, and deepen our relationship with both.

As the audience engagement manager, you will operate our social media channels, post stories on our website, develop marketing campaigns for our email newsletters, and create strategies for expanding the reach of our national reporting projects. In addition, you’ll help track the impact our work has at both the national and local levels. You’ll collaborate with the editor-in-chief and executive editor, as well our new team of national reporters and our network of local higher-ed reporters at partner newsrooms.

You’ll be a central part of a small team, and that means you’ll help us meet lots of needs. You’ll manage our web site and our social media presence — doing things like scheduling Twitter posts, solving that WordPress issue, and figuring out the Mailchimp template. But being a central part of our team also means that you’ll help us shape the future of our growing start-up nonprofit newsroom — helping us set strategies for growing our audience, understanding their needs, creating new products, and deciding what local markets we expand to next.

The audience engagement manager will report to the editor-in-chief. We’re based in Washington, D.C., but you may work from anywhere in the U.S.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

  • A flexible and creative journalist who has experience as a social media or engagement producer in a news setting.
  • Someone who’s curious about data, is able to learn various tools to discover insights, and can then communicate them clearly to the rest of the team.
  • A strong writer and editor — graphic design skills a plus, as well.
  • Someone excited about our mission and skilled at communicating that to the rest of the world.

We know there are important skills we haven’t thought of or strong candidates who don’t have this exact background. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us more.

Covering the full range of higher education also means we’re very interested in applicants who attended community colleges, regional public universities, historically Black colleges and universities, and other minority-serving institutions. Graduating from a fancy college is definitely not a requirement.

Open Campus is committed to building an inclusive culture that reflects the full diversity of the nation. We encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities.

About Open Campus

Founded in 2019, Open Campus is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to higher education. We are building a local network of sophisticated higher-education journalists, supported by a team of national editors and reporters who are subject-matter experts. Open Campus local reporters are embedded in partner newsrooms. We currently work with seven newsrooms in six states. (See the map of our Open Campus network here.)

We believe limited journalistic scrutiny of the full range of American higher education fuels disconnection and distrust. That’s why we think more thoughtful, aggressive coverage of all parts of our system matters. Higher ed’s best chance to reclaim the confidence of more Americans is through greater transparency and accountability.

Benefits of working at Open Campus

  • 20 vacation days, plus sick leave and major holidays
  • Health insurance
  • Disability Insurance
  • Life Insurance
  • 401(k) with matching
  • Up to 6 months paid family leave

How to apply

Interested candidates should apply here by August 6 , 2021. Have questions about this position? Contact Scott Smallwood at scott@opencampusmedia.org. Please note: We are not accepting résumés or applications via email. All candidates must apply here.