Growth Editor, Free Expression

Dow Jones & Company•New York City, NY

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Wall Street Journal is seeking a Growth Editor for its Free Expression newsletter, a daily publication on American life, politics, and culture from the Opinion pages. This role is responsible for building direct audience relationships, with a focus on leveraging Substack as a scalable engine for acquisition and engagement. The Growth Editor will operate at the intersection of editorial, audience, product, marketing, and contributor development, aiming to reach, convert, and retain new audiences beyond the existing WSJ ecosystem while maintaining the newsletter's editorial distinctiveness and credibility. The position is based in the NYC office.

Requirements

Significant experience in audience development, newsletter growth, digital publishing, creator media, platform strategy, or a related field.
Demonstrated experience growing an audience on Substack or a comparable platform, with deep familiarity with its mechanics (recommendations, Notes, restacks, cross-promotion, comments, and community).
Strong editorial judgment, including the ability to distinguish content that builds a durable reader relationship from content that is merely popular.
Strong analytical skills and comfort working with audience data, dashboards, experimentation, and performance metrics.
Ability to work effectively across editorial, product, marketing, analytics, and commercial teams without formal authority.
Excellent writing, editing, packaging, and communication skills.
Experience developing contributor-, creator-, or talent-led franchises.
Experience connecting audience growth to subscription and retention outcomes.
A genuine interest in independent voices, ideas, debate, and the role of journalism in a free society.

Responsibilities

Own the Free Expression growth strategy, including plans, goals, and operating cadence for acquiring, engaging, converting, and retaining readers, with a target of approximately 2,500 net-new Substack readers per week.
Optimize Free Expression's presence on Substack by managing the homepage, Notes, comments, recommendations, cross-promotion, and community features, utilizing recommendation swaps, restacks, cross-posting, and contributor-led promotion to expand reach.
Explore and test new distribution channels, partnerships, and audience segments, developing a repeatable playbook from successful initiatives to inform future Dow Jones newsletter products.
Collaborate with Opinion editors and writers to refine the newsletter's core themes and point of view, ensuring each edition has a clear daily purpose and establishing recurring franchises and publishing rhythms.
Identify promising contributors and support their development into recognized audience brands through bylines, promotion, community engagement, audio, video, and live events.
Monitor performance across Substack, the newsletter, the website, and social media, tracking list growth, acquisition sources, engagement, conversion, and churn.
Conduct experiments to enhance content, packaging, cadence, and promotion.
Evaluate growth based on both quality and volume, and work with analytics, product, marketing, and finance teams to link audience gains to subscription outcomes, including the framework for a future paid model.