Financial Times seeks head of newsletters in London

The Financial Times is looking for an innovative and entrepreneurial journalist to lead our newsletters and take a strategic role in developing our full portfolio of curated journalism. Newsletters are a core part of the Financial Times editorial and subscription model. With a portfolio of 25 newsletters covering topics from markets to the business of sports, dealmaking to culture and ideas, and property to economics, and with new products being developed and launched, newsletters are some of our most valuable journalism and powerful tools for engaging with our audience.

We need a leader who believes passionately in digital journalism and the unique strength of newsletters to reach audiences directly and build relationships and loyalty. The right candidate is an experienced journalist with roots in a newsroom and honed editorial judgment. You have a deep familiarity with the FT’s unique brand of globally-focused journalism. You have a sophisticated understanding of audience and you know how to use editorial analytics to inform editorial and strategic decisions to help grow the engagement and reach of newsletters.

You know what makes a compelling newsletter and you are familiar with the challenges of shaping and growing one, even as though challenges change all the time. You are across the innovations within the news industry, monitoring the newsletter developments and products of other publishers, with an eye to spotting opportunities for experimentation that are right for the Financial Times. You are keen to experiment with innovations in content, format and community-building strategies to make our newsletters more useful and engaging to our readers. You are skilled at working collaboratively, and are able to reach across both the newsroom, to sector experts, editors, the social media and design teams, and to partners in product, marketing and advertising, to ensure that our newsletters deliver excellent journalism, have unique identities, a clear purpose, and measurable results.

The successful candidate will also be a strong and thoughtful manager with the ability to oversee a team of newsletter editors and a broad global network of editorial contributors. You are a clear and gracious communicator, who enjoys energising and helping inspire colleagues.

Responsibilities:

• Commission, edit and coordinate copy for the newsletters, liaising with FT journalists on their contributions, insuring that all of our newsletters meet the highest FT standard for journalism and showcase our best and most relevant content

• Manage a team of journalists in London, New York and Hong Kong and coordinate with a network of contributing writers and editors

• Develop newsletter experiments that take advantage of the unique opportunities newsletters present to build communities, leverage reader contributions and insights, create dialogue and build more personal relationships

• Stay focused on and be accountable for growing the audiences of all our newsletters and growing the number of FT readers who follow newsletters

• Conceive or help conceive and create new newsletter products to meet audience needs/opportunities, and offer a constructive and strategic consideration of all proposals for new newsletters

• Work closely with the bespoke data dashboards and the analytics team to monitor performance and growth of newsletters and communicate these performance insights via regular reports to the broader editorial teams and newsletter stakeholders

• Work closely with marketing on coordinating creative campaigns and partnerships for growth and promotion of newsletters

• Work closely with advertising to optimise the monetisation of newsletters

• Work closely with product and tech on the design and reader-facing features of newsletters

• Work on multiple projects and often across multiple time zones at once

Requirements:

• Previous newsletter experience, even if it’s a personal newsletter project

• Experience in a newsroom, either reporting, editing or producing news, of any format

• Highly organised with a skill for managing projects, large or small

• Ideally, it would be nice to have experience in testing and launching new products

• You are inspired by the prospect of working in a newsroom that is full of kind and talented people

With your application, please include a CV and cover letter explaining how you think your particular experience could help make Financial Times newsletters better and include some examples of what you think are great newsletters.  

To apply, go here.