Deputy Editor, Future Perfect

Vox Media, LLC • Washington, DC

10d • $95,000 - $105,000

About The Position

Vox Media employees thrive on innovation and change while ambitiously seeking to master their subject areas, hone their craft, and improve their communities. We help smart, talented, creative professionals make a meaningful impact in media, technology, and the world around them.
Our Future Perfect section is an especially exciting place for that mission to come alive. Future Perfect covers the world through a particular prism: What are the best ways to do good in this world? Future Perfect strives to shine a light on neglected stories that have, or will have, a profound impact on the lives of billions of humans and animals.
Vox is looking for a Deputy Editor for Future Perfect. This role is first and foremost a people-and-story job: you’ll be responsible for managing and editing Future Perfect’s three reporting fellows, helping them generate strong ideas, select the right stories, execute ambitious reporting, and publish clean, sharp copy on a consistent cadence. Because the fellows are relatively early career, this role also includes meaningful coaching and skills development, including planning occasional “brown bag” training sessions.
In addition, the deputy editor will oversee and edit Future Perfect’s twice-weekly newsletter, and, in close partnership with the editor of Future Perfect, will lead the process of recruiting and selecting the next class of fellows who will start in the summer.
The position will be a full-time, 16 month role.
Among our key subject areas include:
Emerging technology and artificial intelligence
Philanthropy, altruism, and the institutions that shape giving
Global health and global development
Animal welfare and factory farming
Catastrophic risks to humanity, including pandemics and nuclear war
Other evidence-driven approaches to improving lives at scale

Requirements

• At least 3 years of full-time editing experience, ideally in a fast-paced digital newsroom environment; management experience is a major plus.
• A clear point of view on how to coach and develop writers, especially early-career reporters, with a willingness to give direct feedback while building trust and momentum.
• Strong story judgment and editing range — you can help reporters move from a promising question to a clean nut graf, from a messy draft to a coherent structure, and from “interesting” to “compelling and useful.”
• Comfort with the realities of web publishing: you understand urgency and speed, without sacrificing accuracy and care.
• Enthusiasm for (and ideally familiarity with) Future Perfect’s core areas — emerging technology and AI, philanthropy, global health, global development, and animal welfare — and a genuine appetite for evidence-driven reporting and argument.
• An organized, self-starting approach: you can manage multiple moving parts (fellows, edits, training, recruitment, newsletters) without dropping the thread.

Responsibilities

• Manage and edit three reporting fellows — soliciting and shaping ideas, selecting stories, guiding reporting plans, editing drafts, and supporting fellows’ growth as journalists at Vox. This includes helping fellows build strong habits around sourcing, structure, evidence, fairness, and voice, while also meeting publishing goals.
• Provide journalism training and coaching for early-career reporters, including designing occasional brown-bag sessions (e.g., story framing, interviewing, working with studies/data, reporting ethics, writing with clarity and voice, and navigating edits).
• Oversee the recruitment and selection of the next class of three reporting fellows, beginning in the spring. This includes outreach to potential candidates, managing and winnowing applications, designing and evaluating edit tests, coordinating interview loops, and helping make final selections in conjunction with the editor of Future Perfect.
• Oversee and edit Future Perfect’s twice-weekly newsletter, including shaping lineups, editing copy, sharpening voice and structure, and ensuring the newsletter reliably reflects the best of Future Perfect’s mission and journalism.
• Support day-to-day editorial operations as needed: helping maintain story calendars, identifying gaps and opportunities in coverage, coordinating with partners across Vox (copy desk, art, audience, audio/video), and stepping in on additional editing and management duties to keep the section running smoothly.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed