We're seeking an exceptional journalist and leader to join our founding leadership team as Managing Editor of Partnerships and Central Support. This role offers a rare opportunity to help design and build our startup newsroom from the ground up. As one of our first key hires, you'll be instrumental in shaping our editorial vision, organizational structure, and operational workflows during this formative stage.

Working alongside the Executive Editor, the Managing Editor, Local and the Head of Audience and Membership, you'll help create a newsroom that produces ambitious, impactful journalism connecting street-level concerns to city and state issues. Your leadership will ensure that in our reporting we connect news and information on the ground in communities with things going on across the L.A. region, uplifting voices from our community newsrooms to our L.A. wide publication, to our media partners, and vice versa. You will be the owner of our efforts to ensure information flows more freely in the L.A. local news ecosystem, that we’re building strong, supportive relationships with our media partners, and collaborating to ensure more journalism gets to more people in L.A.

As a founding leader in our organization, you'll have significant influence in determining how our newsroom operates. You'll help establish our editorial processes, define team roles and responsibilities, develop our partnership framework, and shape our organizational culture, alongside our leadership team. Your ideas and vision will directly impact how we build this organization from its foundation.

This role will evolve as our organization grows. We're looking for someone who's energized by the prospect of helping define their own role while adapting to the changing needs of a startup newsroom.

The Los Angeles Local News Initiative is a nonprofit startup dedicated to revitalizing local journalism in Los Angeles. We're building a new model for community-focused news that connects neighborhood-level reporting with broader regional issues. Our approach combines dedicated community newsrooms with a central hub that amplifies local stories, identifies cross-community trends, and produces region-wide coverage that matters to all Angelenos.

• Free, Independent Local Press: We believe all Angelenos deserve to have a source of unbiased information that equips them to thrive in their daily lives. Our work will meet high journalism standards, be independent, non-partisan, and free to access. We’ll prioritize reaching as many Angelenos as possible, in the most effective ways possible.
• Community-first: We center the needs of local communities, with an ultimate goal to strengthen communities and make LA work better for Angelenos. Journalism should be focused on serving people most affected by the subject matter, and equipping them to take action.
• Equity & Inclusion: We need a representative, equitable, and inclusive local press. Newsrooms should be representative of the communities they cover, shift narratives to be centered on community perspectives, and provide pathways into newsgathering for residents.
• Trust: We believe that building trust must be a core principle of our journalism. As a baseline, the journalism we support must be accurate, independent, unbiased, non-partisan, and a trusted source of shared facts by the communities we serve.

Editorial Strategy & Product Development

• Work with the Head of Audience and Membership to create and define our strategy for region-wide editorial products (website, newsletters, social media), designing innovative approaches that make local news compelling to diverse audiences
• Develop a content strategy that balances breaking news, in-depth reporting, service journalism, and community voices, complementing and lifting up the work of colleagues in neighborhood hubs
• Work with the Executive Editor to translate this strategy into staffing plans and publishing schedules
• Provide editorial consistency across our news products, ensuring they showcase both our local reporting and relevant partner content

Team Building & Leadership

• Recruit and build a team of versatile journalists who can both produce content and support our local community publications
• Develop specialized capacity in service journalism, visual storytelling, social media, and data journalism
• Oversee content management for our L.A. Documenters program, which trains and pays residents to cover public meetings
• Foster a collaborative, innovative newsroom culture that values diverse perspectives

Partnership Development

• Build and deepen relationships with our network of 20+ media partners across Los Angeles
• Identify and execute collaborative reporting projects that leverage the strengths of multiple newsrooms
• Coordinate coverage during major breaking news events
• Expand our partnership network to strengthen the local news ecosystem

Innovation & Audience Growth

• Grow audience and reach through content strategy and execution that is constantly attracting new audiences, earning their trust and developing lasting relationships with them
• Develop distinctive approaches to service journalism that directly address community information needs
• Work with the social editor to create platform-specific content strategies that reach new audiences
• Lead the launch of arts and culture coverage that reflects L.A.'s diverse communities
• Collaborate with the Head of Audience to ensure content is accessible and engaging to a wide range of Angelenos

A Typical Week Might Include

• Monday editorial meeting to plan the week's coverage and coordinate with community editors
• Editing a collaborative investigation involving two community newsrooms and a media partner
• Working with the service journalism team to develop an explainer on a citywide issue like how a city budget gets approved
• Meeting with potential new media partners to discuss collaborative editorial opportunities
• Strategizing with the audience team about an upcoming social media campaign
• Checking in with direct reports on their projects and professional development opportunities
• Editing breaking news with regional impact on tight deadlines

What Success Looks Like

First 3 months: You've built relationships with the team and media partners, contributed to our editorial vision, and begun developing our approach to region-wide coverage.

First 6 months: You've helped launch our first region-wide products, established workflows between local and regional coverage, and executed at least one major collaborative project.

First year: You've built a high-performing team, established our newsroom as a vital source of information for Angelenos, and created sustainable partnership models that strengthen local journalism across the city.

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• Passionate advocate for local, public service journalism with a track record of impactful work
• Entrepreneurial mindset—someone who thrives in ambiguity and is excited by building something new
• Experience managing newsroom teams to produce their best work
• Background in launching new editorial products or implementing newsroom strategies
• Strong understanding of digital audience development and engagement
• Excellent editorial judgment and editing skills
• Collaborative approach to leadership and problem-solving
• Ability to work effectively with diverse communities and stakeholders

Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience. The salary range for this role is $150,000-$175,000 with a generous benefits package.

We’re committed to building an inclusive organization that represents the people and communities we serve. We encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Indigenous people, veterans, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. The Los Angeles Local News Initiative is dedicated to equal employment opportunities for all applicants and employees. We encourage people of all races, colors, national origins, ancestries, creeds, religions, genders, ages, disabilities, veteran status, sexual orientations, and marital statuses to apply.

‍What to expect in the hiring process

‍We hope to fill this role as soon as possible, though the hiring process can typically take weeks to months. We will do our best to communicate with you about timing expectations throughout the process. Candidates who advance to later rounds of this process can expect multiple interviews with members of our hiring committee, and will be asked to complete a written assignment designed to help us understand your thinking and approach to the role. We aim to truly get to know you, to help you fully understand the role you’re applying for.

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