Audience Engagement Specialist

Chicago Public Media•Chicago, IL

About The Position

We are seeking an Audience Engagement Specialist to help grow, reach, and engage our digital audience with an emphasis on building deep relationships with our community, increasing trust, and enhancing loyalty. The ideal candidate should be passionate about journalism and how our reporting can fit into readers' lives to help them better understand the city, their neighbors and themselves. Our next Audience Engagement Specialist should be dynamic, open to learning new tools and platforms, data-driven, and have applied knowledge of journalistic ethics and standards. The ideal candidate has a desire to connect Chicago to our award-winning, fact-based, and community centered journalism. We do this by collaborating with editors and reporters to: Reformat reporting for platform specific audiences (e.g., Instagram carousels, aggregate articles, social explainers, newsletters). Connect Chicago to the newsroom by identifying digital engagement opportunities (e.g., Reddit AMAs, TikTok, new platform guidance). Cover trending, live, and breaking news on platforms, and in ways that are most useful to the public (e.g., live blog support, Google Trends review, SMS, App alerts). Enhance in-platform story reach and audience engagement (e.g., headline support, SEO review, in-article modules, recirculation, programming fronts). Surface story ideas, coverage angles and format considerations through audience listening (e.g., social listening, Google Trends, analytics platforms). Program the Sun-Times and WBEZ homepage to reflect editorial interests and the needs and expectations of the distinct Chicago Public Media audiences. Candidates should have an interest and some understanding of online communities, platform dynamics, and shifting audience behaviors on emerging, established, and owned platforms.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in journalism or a related field, or comparable professional experience
Available to work flexible hours

Responsibilities

Curate Chicago Public Media owned home and section pages, including Sun-Times and WBEZ, to showcase the most relevant, timely, and popular content, using data and experimentation.
Review and publish stories following SEO best practices, audio-to-digital storytelling and audience engagement, optimizing content across multiple platforms to help target audiences find the content they want.
SEO and social copy that appropriately reflects our reporting and attracts diverse audiences, prioritizing factual accuracy and sound editorial judgment and reflects audience needs and encourages engagement.
Conceptualize, plan and create original audience-focused callouts, posts (including Stories, Lives and Reels), projects or campaigns across our platforms – which may include social media, news aggregators, audio platforms and third-party sites (social, Apple News, Spotify etc) or owned and operated channels (website, app, streaming or newsletters) – to engage target audiences, working collaboratively with other colleagues and teams.
Communicate effectively with other audience team members, journalists and colleagues and help Chicago Public Media reach its organizational goals by improving audience relationships with flagship brands (Sun-Times, WBEZ, Vocalo), workplace culture, editorial excellence and impact.
Solicit and respond to feedback from our readers on different platforms, helping to deepen our community relationships; demonstrate inclusivity of diverse experiences and perspectives.
Consider data, community feedback and other research to develop deeper knowledge of our platforms and audiences; and experiment with different approaches to better reach, engage and serve target audiences, advising and steering editorial efforts to better serve our community.
Identify trending and breaking news opportunities, working with editors and reporters to write or aggregate stories that build audiences based on those trends.
Manage Sun-Times and WBEZ social media channels, optimizing for sharing and engagement.
Create multimedia content to enhance daily news coverage (i.e., video, graphics, text images, live streams, slideshows, social media embeds) and breaking news alerts.
Compile and send emails and/or newsletters as needed to deepen engagement with our audiences.