The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is seeking an audience development and community engagement specialist to help shape the next phase of our strategic growth. We want to transform the way our journalism serves and engages audiences and communities around the world in order to deepen our real-world impact and drive revenue.

As part of the Bureau’s senior edit team, the Impact and Audience Editor will work directly with our project teams including health, environment, finance and Bureau Local, supporting them to embed impact in their reporting and engage the communities who can benefit from their journalism. This role will also lead experiments and undertake research and analysis to lay the foundations for a cohesive audience strategy that both delivers on our mission to drive real-world change and provides a sustainable financial base.

The successful applicant will have a passion for driving positive change through collaborative journalism, a creative, insightful approach to serving and engaging loyal audiences and an advanced understanding of the membership/subscription landscape in non-profit news.

Context

Over the past two years the size of the Bureau’s team, the scale of our global reach and the level of our collaborations has grown substantially. We have also transformed the way we think about our impact, creating new roles and methods that embed our mission to drive change throughout our journalistic processes. Our investigations regularly reach an audience of millions through our publishing partnerships around the UK and globally, and we are directly engaging specific people and organisations who can use our work to drive change, from lawmakers to campaigners to grassroots community groups. We have also grown a direct community of supporters through regular newsletters and events.

We now need to build a vision for significantly expanding and better engaging our direct audiences and communities across our online and offline platforms. Increased, deeper engagement is the necessary next step for taking our impact to the next level and building a committed supporter base – key strategic goals for the next three years.

The Role

The Impact and Audience Editor cover will sit within the Bureau’s senior editorial team and report to both the CEO and Editor. They will work with our project editors, impact producers, community organisers and audience engagement officer with a focus on defining, building and better serving direct audiences, and laying the groundwork for a cohesive audience strategy that supports editorial, impact and fundraising goals (a strategy which the whole team will ultimately deliver under the leadership of the CEO). Over a 12-month period they will be responsible for the following:

• Supporting impact across the organisation as a member of the senior edit team, including strategic oversight of project editors, impact producers, community organisers and an audience engagement officer

• Audience and stakeholder mapping and research across our impact and supporter outreach/engagement work and our website, to understand:

  • Who we are engaging, in what formats, with what results

  • How we could bring greater value and drive greater engagement within those groups

  • Which new audiences and communities we could be engaging to better deliver on our mission and ultimately build revenue

• Coordination of audience development experiments/trials that support TBIJ strategy with clear objectives and project management

• Audience action plan defining priority target audiences and key communities for 2022/23, outlining tactics, resources, roles and responsibilities;

• Support and advice for staff across the organisation to embed and deliver audience and community engagement objectives in their work

Desirable skills and experience:

• Strategic and tactical experience of direct audience development and community engagement (in a media or similar organisation) to meet specific objectives such as driving impact and revenue

• Experience in monitoring and evaluation; ability to incorporate data and testing into decision-making processes

• Understanding of editorial processes and credibility in the journalism world

• Experience managing change and implementing new processes

• A passion for driving change through collaborative, investigative journalism

• Critical thinking skills and a keen interest in power structures, visible and hidden

Duration: 12 months

It is envisaged that this is a four-day-a-week role, primarily based in our London office (though we have hybrid working), but as The Bureau is committed to supporting people who require a more flexible approach to working this is open to discussion.

The Bureau is committed to being an inclusive and diverse employer providing opportunities for all, where people can come to do their best work. We encourage individuals from BAME communities or disadvantaged backgrounds as these groups are currently underrepresented in the media industry, which is something we are committed to changing.

To Apply

Send a CV and covering letter to impactjob@tbij.com by January 4, 2022. Please mention Journo Resources when you apply, it really helps us out.

If you have any questions, please contact miriamwells@tbij.com

Please also fill out our Equality Monitoring Form here, which is anonymous, so we can better track who we are reaching.