Job Description

Audience Engagement Specialist

The Chicago Sun-Times is the hardest-working paper in America, covering the stories and issues that matter most to Chicagoans with depth, integrity, and grit. The newsroom has earned eight Pulitzer Prizes for its hard-hitting investigative reporting, in-depth political coverage, insightful sports analysis, entertainment reviews, and cultural commentary. An industry-leading innovator in local news, it has been recognized nationally for expanding digital and multimedia reporting platforms alongside its indomitable daily newspaper, which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023.

In January 2022, the Sun-Times merged with public radio station WBEZ with a shared mission to strengthen local journalism in Chicago. Under the banner of Chicago Public Media, Chicago Sun-Times Media, Inc. (CSTM) is now part of one of the largest nonprofit news organizations in the nation. This merger reinforces our commitment to serving Chicagoans with the news that matters mostfact-based, unbiased journalism that is deeply connected to Chicago communities.

We are seeking a current Chicago Sun-Times News Guild employee interested in transferring to an Audience Engagement Specialist role to help grow, reach, and engage our digital audience with an emphasis on building deep relationships with our community, increasing trust, and enhancing loyalty. The ideal candidate should be passionate about journalism and how our reporting can fit into readers' lives to help them better understand the city, their neighbors and themselves. Audience Engagement Specialists should be dynamic, open to learning new tools and platforms, data-driven, and have applied knowledge of journalistic ethics and standards.

The ideal candidate has a desire to connect Chicago to our award-winning, fact-based, and community centered journalism. We do this by collaborating with editors and reporters to:

• Reformat reporting for platform specific audiences (e.g., Instagram carousels, aggregate articles, social explainers, newsletters).
• Connect Chicago to the newsroom by identifying digital engagement opportunities (e.g., Reddit AMAs, TikTok, new platform guidance).
• Cover trending, live, and breaking news on platforms, and in ways that are most useful to the public (e.g., live blog support, Google Trends review, SMS, App alerts).
• Enhance in-platform story reach and audience engagement (e.g., headline support, SEO review, in-article modules, recirculation, programming fronts).
• Surface story ideas, coverage angles and format considerations through audience listening (e.g., social listening, Google Trends, analytics platforms).

Candidates should have an interest and some understanding of online communities, platform dynamics, and shifting audience behaviors on emerging, established, and owned platforms. Audience duties consist of:

• Curate home and section pages of the Sun-Times website to showcase the most relevant, timely, and popular content, using data and experimentation.
• Edit and publish stories following the best practices of SEO, storytelling and audience engagement, optimizing content across multiple platforms to help target audiences find the content they want.
• SEO and share lines that appropriately reflect our reporting and attract diverse audiences, prioritizing factual accuracy, demonstrating sound judgment and complying with best ethical practices.
• Conceptualize, plan and create original audience-focused callouts, posts (including Stories, Lives and Reels), projects or campaigns across our platforms which may include social media, news aggregators, third-party sites (social, Apple News, etc) or owned and operated channels (website, app or newsletters) to develop our diverse target audiences, working collaboratively with other colleagues and teams.
• Communicate effectively with other audience team members, journalists and colleagues and help CST reach its organizational goals by improving CST's audience relationships, workplace culture, editorial excellence and impact.
• Solicit and respond to feedback from our readers on different platforms, helping to deepen our community relationships; demonstrate inclusivity of diverse experiences and perspectives.
• Consider data, community feedback and other research to develop deeper knowledge of our platforms and audiences; and experiment with different approaches to better reach, engage and serve target audiences, advising and steering editorial efforts to better serve our community.
• Identify trending and breaking news opportunities, working with editors and reporters to write or aggregate stories that build audiences based on those trends.
• Manage Sun-Times' social media channels, optimizing for sharing and engagement.
• Create multimedia content to enhance daily news coverage (i.e., video, graphics, text images, live streams, slideshows, social media embeds) and breaking news alerts.
• Compile and send emails and/or newsletters as needed to deepen engagement with our audiences.

The Audience Engagement Specialist must be willing to work four weekday evenings and one daytime weekend shift a week.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in journalism or a related field, or comparable professional experience
• Available to work flexible hours
• Current Chicago Sun-Times employee in a News Guild-represented position

Compensation:

The expected pay range for this position is $58,047.85-$65,000 per ANNUM. Chicago Public Media provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the organization reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographical location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

Working at Chicago Public Media:

At Chicago Public Media, we care deeply about our employees as we know attracting, developing, and growing talent is key to our success and enhancing our impact.

Our culture is one where collaboration, diversity of ideas, and innovation are encouraged. We value colleagues who will enhance our culture by bringing new ideas, divergent experiences, and talents to our dynamic workplace.

At Chicago Public Media we believe dedication to a great workplace includes supporting our employees and their families. As a result, we provide a broad and generous benefits package for employees at hire and in the years to come.

Our benefits include a competitive salary and benefits package which includes medical, dental, vision, vacation, holidays, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement savings, and a commuter benefits plan. Chicago Public Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and we actively seek and welcome people from all backgrounds, orientations, and life experiences to join our team.

The essential functions described above are not all-inclusive and are not intended to create any contractual or other legal commitment. Chicago Public Media may change the content or format of this job at any time in its sole and exclusive discretion without notice.

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