Knight Foundation seeks an online community manager
An interesting job popped into my mailbox today that a) you might be interested in, and b) says a lot about the evolving role of the journalist in the digital age.
Marc Fest, director of communications for the Knight Foundation, is looking for an Online Community Manager to create a "vibrant online discussion community" focused on "journalism excellence, communities and systematic, transformational change." This person will live and breathe in the blogosphere, serving as "Knights eyes, ears and voice".
You can read the full job posting here.
Is this a marketing job? I would say yes, in part. Is it a journalism job, too? Most definitely. And in my opinion it speaks volumes about an entirely new skill set every journalist needs to have in order to be successful in today's media landscape.
Fundamentally it's about something we should have been doing more of in this industry long ago: listening, responding and carrying on a conversation -- all while keeping people informed with the information and knowledge that we glean.
Once upon a time, a journalist was expected to go out and talk one on one with a handful sources to generate stories. That's largely where public interaction ended.
Things are different now, and changing by the hour. Increasingly we see journalists being thrust into the role of online discussion leaders, managers and moderators. It happens whether or not they want it to. In Bakersfield this has become so important that we hired a full-time online community coordinator a year ago, with very good results.
On our other social networking sites, which are separate from the newspaper and in many cases have their own print publications, "community management" tasks easily take up 30% of the editor's time. For that reason we find ourselves referring to those people less and less as editors, and more often with new terms such as Brand Evangelist, Brand Manager and even Product Manager.
These jacks-of-all-trades are constantly out there interacting with the community, often publicly, online and in person. While they still edit content for online and print, they also do a lot of things that they were never taught in journalism school: for example, giving video overviews of what's in the next issue. If I had to choose an archetype that symbolizes their jobs, it would be Dick Van Dyke as the one-man band in Mary Poppins, playing every conceivable instrument simultaneously while also carrying on a conversation. (Yes, I realize that analogy makes me look childish. No, I don't care. I have young kids so deal :-) We regularly watch The Muppets, too.)
Once you invite public conversation into a newspaper Web site -- surprise, the audience expects to be able to converse with YOU! And that takes time to do right.
Most news organizations don't plan ahead for this and either end up scrambling to hire someone they didn't anticipate, or in a few sad cases pulling all public discussion off their sites. Ultimately they have to re-enable conversation to remain competitive because the people formerly known as the audience expect everything to be less like 60 Minutes and more like Oprah.
By the way, if you're interested in this Knight Foundation job, please don't respond to me. They ask that you send resume and examples of your work to careers@knightfdn.org. See the job posting for details.
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Marc Fest, director of communications for the Knight Foundation, is looking for an Online Community Manager to create a "vibrant online discussion community" focused on "journalism excellence, communities and systematic, transformational change." This person will live and breathe in the blogosphere, serving as "Knights eyes, ears and voice".
You can read the full job posting here.
Is this a marketing job? I would say yes, in part. Is it a journalism job, too? Most definitely. And in my opinion it speaks volumes about an entirely new skill set every journalist needs to have in order to be successful in today's media landscape.
Fundamentally it's about something we should have been doing more of in this industry long ago: listening, responding and carrying on a conversation -- all while keeping people informed with the information and knowledge that we glean.
Once upon a time, a journalist was expected to go out and talk one on one with a handful sources to generate stories. That's largely where public interaction ended.
Things are different now, and changing by the hour. Increasingly we see journalists being thrust into the role of online discussion leaders, managers and moderators. It happens whether or not they want it to. In Bakersfield this has become so important that we hired a full-time online community coordinator a year ago, with very good results.
On our other social networking sites, which are separate from the newspaper and in many cases have their own print publications, "community management" tasks easily take up 30% of the editor's time. For that reason we find ourselves referring to those people less and less as editors, and more often with new terms such as Brand Evangelist, Brand Manager and even Product Manager.
These jacks-of-all-trades are constantly out there interacting with the community, often publicly, online and in person. While they still edit content for online and print, they also do a lot of things that they were never taught in journalism school: for example, giving video overviews of what's in the next issue. If I had to choose an archetype that symbolizes their jobs, it would be Dick Van Dyke as the one-man band in Mary Poppins, playing every conceivable instrument simultaneously while also carrying on a conversation. (Yes, I realize that analogy makes me look childish. No, I don't care. I have young kids so deal :-) We regularly watch The Muppets, too.)
Once you invite public conversation into a newspaper Web site -- surprise, the audience expects to be able to converse with YOU! And that takes time to do right.
Most news organizations don't plan ahead for this and either end up scrambling to hire someone they didn't anticipate, or in a few sad cases pulling all public discussion off their sites. Ultimately they have to re-enable conversation to remain competitive because the people formerly known as the audience expect everything to be less like 60 Minutes and more like Oprah.
By the way, if you're interested in this Knight Foundation job, please don't respond to me. They ask that you send resume and examples of your work to careers@knightfdn.org. See the job posting for details.
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posted by Dan at
12/07/2007 03:06:00 PM
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