Senior Editor, Audience Development, CNN Features

Warner Bros. Discovery•Washington, DC

3d•$91,000 - $169,000

About The Position

The Senior Audience Editor is an embedded, desk-specific partner to Audience Strategy & Insights, responsible for translating audience signals into clear editorial choices that grow reach, deepen engagement, and strengthen habit, including among subscribers. This role will supply the desk with essential performance learnings, shape framing, formats, and distribution to meet audience demand, run experiments, and coordinate execution across Search, Social, Home, Notifications, and Newsletters. The senior-level scope includes assigning, writing, and editing analysis, leading insights for strategic priorities, developing scalable workflows, and coaching others. The position operates within the AIS operating model and in partnership with DART (Data, Analytics, Research & Testing) to turn insights into action and build repeatable practices for the desk.

Requirements

5–7+ years in digital journalism, audience development, content strategy, or insights roles.
Proven ability to identify coverage, framing, and format opportunities that attract new readers and deepen engagement.
Strong ability to synthesize complex data into prescriptive editorial recommendations; experience partnering closely with analytics teams.
Ability to write platform-native social copy and coach others on best practices.
Strong cross-newsroom collaborator committed to CNN’s journalistic independence and mission.
Fluent in search trends, intent shifts, and misinformation dynamics.
Deep expertise across mainstream and emerging social platforms.
Strong communication and storytelling skills for reports and presentations; comfortable with testing, iteration, and directional reads.
Skilled at bridging editorial, product, analytics, design, and research to move work forward.
Strong understanding of the competitive landscape and broader attention patterns.

Responsibilities

Deliver concise, actionable daily/weekly/monthly insights that guide coverage decisions and follow-ups, including clear “do more / do less / try next” recommendations.
Suggest stories, angles, and formats aligned to search intent, evergreen opportunities, and time-sensitive audience demand.
Shape story framing and presentation across on-platform surfaces (site/app, home, article packaging, recirculation) and off-platform channels (search, social, alerts, newsletters).
Partner with Product and platform teams (Search, Social, Home, Notifications, Newsletters) to identify opportunities in modules, templates, topic hubs, and alerting.
Drive reach, engagement, and habit by aligning desk plans to audience goals and capturing learnings in structured retros and playbooks.
Coordinate distribution strategy across Off-Platform, Social, Community, Programming, and Newsletter teams.
Assign, write, and edit audience analysis across platforms; act as the insights lead for strategic desk priorities.
Build scalable workflows for insight generation and measure the impact of audience-driven initiatives.
Pitch and run experiments (format, packaging, timing) and translate results into actionable guidance.
Coach and train newsroom staff on audience tools, search and social best practices, and packaging strategies.
Collaborate across editorial, product, analytics, design, and research to embed audience-first thinking across the desk.
Optimize for discoverability: research intent, track seasonality, steward evergreen content, and partner with Search on technical and practical best practices.
Coordinate with Social, Community, Home, Notifications, and Newsletters to maximize reach and engagement.
Contribute to daily/weekly/monthly desk and section updates, synthesizing insights into clear, actionable takeaways.
Uphold CNN’s journalistic mission by using data to inform editorial decisions.