Audience Deputy Director

About the Forward

The Forward delivers incisive coverage of the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews. Its rigorous reporting and balanced commentary on politics, arts and culture have won numerous awards year after year, including repeated recognition by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily, the Forward soon became the most widely read Jewish newspaper anywhere, with a larger circulation in the 1920s than the New York Times. It chronicled the events that affected a population of immigrants eager to take their place in American life, and published regional editions around the country before any other newspaper.

The English Forward was launched as a weekly in 1990. Its perspective on world and national news, and its unparalleled coverage of Jewish arts and culture, have made it the most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet today. Millions of readers visit forward.com each month for award-winning news, thoughtful commentary, and captivating videos. And close to 100,000 Facebook friends and subscribers receive e-newsletters that highlight the latest stories in news and culture, food and feminism, as well as the best in Jewish opinion.

The Forward has always been a not-for-profit association and is supported by the contributions of its readers.

Audience Deputy Director

The Forward seeks a Deputy Director of Audience to help grow our next generation of loyal fans, followers and supporters by piloting promising new initiatives and developing meaningful engagement efforts.

The person in this role will collaborate across the organization to:

• Identify and maximize opportunities for richer interactions among readers, viewers, newsletter subscribers, and members so they feel a greater sense of community, belonging, and connection to the Forward.
• Shape experiments that test the most promising ways to build on these ongoing relationships, tracking and assessing the effectiveness of these efforts so the Forward learns in real time which ones are most likely to lead to continued engagement and support.
• Support our editorial presence on social platforms as part of real conversations about issues of Jewish interest.
• Provide input and coordination for select in-person programs.
• Contribute to an audience-centered culture that relies on data, analytics and insights.

The ideal candidate is fluent across major social platforms, comfortable creating compelling social visuals, as ready to dive into audience dashboards as they are to collaborate on crafting and running reader experiments or greeting people at an event, all while modeling our values of fairness, accuracy and respect for the full range of Jewish perspectives and experiences.

This new full-time role is part host, part lab leader, and part logistics whiz.

Responsibilities include:

• Posting to a few social networks daily – Instagram and Facebook initially – and to another (e.g. Reddit) a few times over the course of the week for real engagement.
• Build community engagement through member comments, book groups, in-person events, Discord, Whatsapp groups, AMAs, gaming, and/or other means.
• Coordinating and collaborating on audience research, from one-on-one user testing to large-scale surveys for insights into our impact and opportunities.
• Contributing inputs and insights to daily and monthly reports on audience growth and engagement.
• Supporting newsletter audience growth and other digital engagement.

A track record of growing reach and engagement – especially around the spread of information and perspectives – will help launch someone well into this role. We don’t expect any candidate to be expert across the range of work this role will do, so please apply if you think you’d excel at much of it and are eager to learn how to do the rest.

The Deputy Director of Audience will be a member of the News Guild, with a salary range of $70,000-$75,000 depending on experience, and generous health benefits and PTO. The position will report to the VP of Strategy and Audience and work closely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Founded in 1897, the Forward is America’s leading voice in Jewish journalism, delivering independent, incisive reporting, essential perspectives on world and national news, and unparalleled coverage of Jewish arts, culture and opinion. The Forward reaches more than 2 million people each month across platforms and has been honored with the most journalism awards of any Jewish media organization. We are a member-supported nonprofit and an Equal Opportunity employer that welcomes applicants from all backgrounds.

The Forward’s newsroom is in New York City, with a generous hybrid work policy for area residents, but we are open to qualified candidates who work remotely from other locations with some visits to New York as needed.

To apply, send to [email protected] your resume and a cover letter, with an example or two of how your audience experience could help the Forward grow engagement. Be sure to include “Deputy Director of Audience” in the subject line.