We’re excited to share this new job opening. OpenNews is a small team (currently two!) that serves a community of journalists seeking to transform culture and the way we use technology in our field.

Much of how we support this community is through facilitation—organizing events that help participants delve into challenging questions together, designing programs that make community resources more visible and available, and helping people develop the relationships that propel forward their work and their careers. Our work creates opportunities for community members to learn, share, and support each other.

This hiring takes place as we’re in the process of reorganizing our structure as a team. We’re moving to a co-director model where we will all work at the same level, delegating across the team different types of work as organizational needs and personal interests dictate. We’re excited to hear what kinds of work YOU are passionate about, and further develop this plan together with the new co-director, who will join the two existing staff. Both current members of the team have been with the organization for over 10 years, in roles that have evolved significantly over time.

This depth and breadth of experience gives a lot of history to work from, and we’re eager to further develop our ways of working with a new colleague. We’ve heard for a long time that attending our conference SRCCON changes the way you attend every other conference—because YOU bring that intention, care, and peer orientation with you into new spaces. We want that to be the way people think about working with OpenNews, too, while they’re part of the team and wherever they go next.

In addition to OpenNews’ own programming, our work as a team has grown in recent years to include consulting with other organizations as well, often around event planning and facilitation, coaching, and editorial support. As a small team, we all take on some consulting and some OpenNews program work, and we’re especially keen to work with someone who has prior experience with consulting as we continue to develop this area of our work.

About You

You might be a part of this community already, or you may bring a perspective from a totally different field. If you already have experience with facilitation, event organizing, project management, and working on collaborative consulting projects, those are all huge pluses.

Since we are a very small team, we do every part of each project ourselves and we feel like this type of work benefits from a generalist rather than expecting expertise in any particular area. You may thrive in this setting if you are adaptive, enjoy exploring ideas, and have a knack for knowing when to bring brainstorming down to earth and make an awesome timeline and plan.

About The Work

This work will likely include:

• event and conference planning (for 10 to 300 people), including our annual conference SRCCON
• consulting and coaching on events and organizational development
• community capacity building and support programs, including projects like the DEI Coalition and Source
• writing, speaking, and research about the field
• organizational development, fundraising, and strategic planning
• travel a few times a year for major events and team meetings, as Covid safety allows

You may not have experience in all of those areas, but we would like you to have demonstrated experience in one or two of them. In addition, we will work together as a team to define what our co-director structure looks like, how it works, and how we delegate different tasks between us across the team.

OpenNews benefits:

• $105,000 salary
• All-remote team
• Fully paid health care insurance premium for employee and family
• Dental and vision
• Life insurance
• Health and child care savings accounts
• Employer retirement contribution after two years of service
• Flexible work hours and team-wide support for work-life balance

How To Apply

If you’re intrigued by this position, but don’t feel like you have the precise background listed, please still do apply. You can reach out with any questions or if you need any further information to feel able to apply. As a small team, we’re excited to hire another generalist and in order to do our work well, we need to ensure there are multiple backgrounds and experiences present. We especially encourage people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, women, and members of other marginalized groups in journalism and technology to apply. At this time, we are only able to hire people who are based in the U.S. and who already hold authorization to work in the U.S.

This application is now closed. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Erika Owens. We also gathered up some questions we’ve received and answered them over here.

Other options: While this position is intended to be a long-term, permanent part of the team, we sometimes have temporary or project based opportunities as well. If you might be interested in something like that, email team@opennews.org with a little bit about what you’re thinking.