Director of Digital Growth

New York Focus, New York’s only statewide nonprofit newsroom, is seeking a growth and audience lead to help expand our readership, promote audience loyalty, generate brand awareness, and support our development team in building strategies to enhance our reader revenue.

New York Focus launched in 2020 to fill a critical gap in the state’s media ecosystem: Almost half of New York’s newspapers have died in the last two decades. Since launching four years ago with a small team operating on a shoestring budget, we’ve grown significantly. We’re currently a full-time team of 13, and on track to grow to nearly 20 by early 2025. Now, we’re looking for someone to take control of our digital growth and strategy by creating, directing and executing a full readership funnel strategy, overseeing our newsletter strategy, developing key insights about our audience and how to best connect with them, running our metrics and analytics program and setting readership goals, and helping to enhance our product to better serve readers.

This position is crucial to our mission of giving New Yorkers across the state the information they need to fully participate in local democracy. We are looking for someone with a passion for local news; who wants to help build new strategies and systems from the ground up; is a data and analytics wiz and loves to dive deep into detailed audience indicators; is excited to take a leadership role in a growing organization; and has a proactive and entrepreneurial spirit.

This position can be based anywhere in New York state. You will work closely with our audience engagement editor, publisher, and editorial team. Please submit a resume, cover letter, and references to hires@nysfocus.com.

Key Responsibilities

In this role, you will:

• Develop a strategy for how to get more readers to our digital products, creating a funnel for turning them into return readers and newsletter subscribers
• Oversee our social media and SEO strategy, with an eye toward creating reader loyalty. Drive our newsletter strategy and interface with our website developer on updates and new initiatives
• Track our audience data and work to turn this data into goals and action items
• Work closely with our engagement editor and reporters around community listening initiatives, partnering with local newspapers to syndicate our work, booking our reporters on radio and TV, and designing other creative strategies to expand our reach
• Support our development team in promoting fundraising campaigns, helping to identify areas for growth
• Create a strategy for synthesizing audience data from the ground up, including producing regular analytics reports and working with reporters to design promotional strategies around their work
• Direct and manage other staff in executing our audience strategy

About You

The ideal candidate will have:

• At least 5 years of experience leading or working on a team dedicated to digital growth or audience development, or transferable skills
• An entrepreneurial spirit; the drive to set growth goals and develop creative strategies to meet them
• An enthusiasm for audience analysis and translating data into actionable insights, and executing on those insights
• A strong sense of mission and passion for helping readers find important stories
• Enthusiasm to take part in building a young, growing publication

Compensation

$80,000 to $105,000 depending on experience level, plus medical, dental, and vision insurance and other benefits

About New York Focus

New York Focus is an independent newsroom investigating how power works in the Empire State. In three years, our stories have spurred legislation, shaped regulation, and driven national news cycles. The newsroom is small and collaborative, and this job is a chance to be creative and enterprising in a workplace that is still building its identity.

We are committed to an inclusive workspace, and we strongly encourage applications from people of color, women, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. Consistent with federal, state, and local law, we are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, veteran status, or other protected categories.