openDemocracy is looking to recruit a Deputy Executive Editor to serve as a partner to the Editor-in-Chief (EIC),  to ensure our journalism doesn’t just report on the world, but serves the communities and movements changing it for the better.

We see this as a one-year position to start, as openDemocracy embarks on a phase of consolidation and growth to secure funding to support this role on a long-term basis.

You will oversee an international team, providing the steady hand and sharp eye needed to maintain editorial excellence and manage a team distributed across three continents.

Core Responsibilities

• Partner with the EIC to define and execute the editorial vision. You will work with the EIC and the team to ensure our marquee projects and investigations align with our mission to be a news, investigations and analysis platform for global movements.
• Manage and mentor the Americas and Africa Editors. You will ensure their output is high quality and tailored for both regional impact and global relevance.
• UK Desk Oversight: Co-manage UK reporters with the EIC, serving as the primary bridge until a team editor is put in place, whom you will then manage.
• Editorial Quality Control: Provide editing oversight with an eye to reaching specific audiences in the UK, manage openDemocracy editors, and act as the final “pair of eyes” on stories before they are published.
• Editorial coherence and relevance: Ensure editorial coherence and relevance of openDemocracy’s flagship weekly newsletter.

KPIs

• Impact and Reach: Increased impact and cut through for our stories based on mutually agreed metrics.
• Editorial Throughput: Improved quality of individual stories, while maintaining a consistent publishing cadence and coherence of our flagship Weekly newsletter with a good representation of stories and investigations from the Americas, Africa, and UK desks.
• Management and Mentorship: Improved morale, wellbeing and professional growth of direct reports

Qualifications and Experience

• Senior leadership experience at a global-facing newsroom with at least 5 to 7 years of experience managing senior editors and diverse teams.
• Global Perspective: Proven experience reporting, editing, and/or managing reporters in the global south. Lived experience in the global south and experience in working with journalists in Africa and Latin America will be seen as a plus.
• Strong Line editing and structural editing skills with demonstrable ability in turning complex investigations into accessible, impactful narratives.
• Strong editorial judgement, particularly around legally sensitive stories.

Application Materials

To apply for the role, please send the following materials to recruitment@opendemocracy.net

• A cover letter (1-2 pages)
• A recent CV or resume
• A memo (2-3 pages) listing three recent openDemocracy articles (one each from the UK, Africa and Latin America), explaining your reason for selection, and how you would have approached them differently from the stage of directing the reporter working on the story to editing and shaping the final article. For instance, You could choose a short piece and explain how and why you would turn it into a deeper investigation; a piece from a particular region and how and why you would turn it into a cross-border investigation. In this exercise, think about your intended audience, consider possible editorial partnerships and distribution, and be realistic about the resources you would need.

Please send all the files in a single PDF if possible.

Shortlisted candidates will then be moved to stage two of the process, involving a round of interviews with openDemocracy newsroom members and an editing test.

Please mention Journo Resources when you apply, it really helps us out.