WANTED: Senior Editor (maternity cover), The Lead

The Lead - Senior Editor (maternity cover) part-time/on-site 

Location: London office

Position: Part-time, maternity cover, 6-month contract 

Salary: £45,000 to £50,000 per annum (pro-rated to £18,000 to £20,000 per annum for 2 days per week)

About The Lead

The Lead is a growing UK politics and culture magazine with a team based out of London and Preston. The Lead is an issue-led start-up publication that focuses on pressing social topics facing the UK such as racism, equality, tackling poverty and climate change. 

About the role

The Lead is seeking maternity cover for Senior Editor for its national newsletter on politics and culture. The newsletter is sent to tens of thousands of subscribers, with particular attention to migration, race, housing, healthcare and education; and covers many other topics besides. The Lead publishes both op-eds and features, and is putting an increasing emphasis on campaigning, through petitions and other platforms. The hours are two full days a week, plus allowance for reasonable availability for consultations in the rest of the week. The work takes place in our offices in Angel, with a reasonable amount of remote work expected. 

As Senior Editor you will be expected to: 

• Share commissioning, editing and publishing duties with the National Editor

• Be comfortable with taking charge of the publication when National Editor is away

• Work with both slow-boil reported features and reactive quick-turnaround op-eds

• Take copy through entire editorial journey, from commissiong and pitching to publication 

• Write editorials for the newsletter - effectively short op-eds, two-three times a month 

• Help us plan our coverage, both from one week to the next and long-term

• Help us grow our audience and impact both among general readership and MVPs 

Experience:  

• Talented and confident in editing features and op-eds. Experience in helping to develop and improve pieces of work, working with both experienced journalists and newer writers. Must be as meticulous about the granular detail - typos, sentence structure, grammar, flow - as you are the editorial content.  

• Proven experience in commissioning - across timely and reactive content as well as evergreen content.

• Plenty of experience writing op-eds across a spectrum of topics - from politics to housing, migration, climate, healthcare and equality. A good eye for a timely story, engaged with the story of the day, and plenty of ideas about how to move that story forward. 

• Specific experience covering race and inequality in the UK.

• Strong connections with a pool of talented writers and journalists that you can call upon to commission across a range of topics.

• Experience using CMS systems, newsletter building and analytics tools.

• Experience of seeding articles and utilising social media to boost engagement and publicise work. 

To apply please send your CV, cover letter and any relevant examples of your work to: [email protected] by midnight on 30th March.