U.S. News & World Report seeks a senior editor, education

U.S. News empowers everyone to thrive. In this position, you will use your strengths and skills to edit education advice content for consumers that covers a wide range of higher education topics, as well as editorial content that covers our education rankings, including Best Colleges, Grad Schools, Online Programs and Global Universities.

You’ll work closely with the managing editor of education on our content strategy in the education space, which includes creating content that helps people make decisions about choosing a college, getting into college, paying for college, financial aid, selecting a college major, graduate school and earning a degree abroad. You’ll recruit and manage freelance writers; edit articles, slideshows and blogs; occasionally write articles; help curate and edit our twice-monthly newsletters, “Extra Help: College Admissions,” and “The Bottom Line: An MBA Applicant’s Guide”; and use analytics tools to monitor the performance of our content.

You’ll also work with our communications team to promote our content on social media and with other media outlets. There are opportunities to serve in a spokesperson capacity if you are comfortable being interviewed by TV, radio and online outlets to talk about our data, methodology, rankings results, trends and content. You might also moderate education webinars and serve in a spokesperson capacity for various other U.S. News Education events.

In this role, you’ll manage and lead a team of freelance writers and contributors. You’ll also work closely with digital producers, SEO experts, rankings data analysts, and product and business team members to deliver helpful and actionable advice content to our readers and ensure our content aligns with our business strategy. The Senior Editor reports to the Managing Editor of Education.

Are you up to the challenge?

You should be a nimble editor who is skilled at juggling several tasks at once, can help drive the editorial coverage in the education space, and can lead a team of talented contributors. As part of the job, you’ll:

Work with the managing editor to help oversee and develop our content strategy for a consumer audience of parents and students who need help choosing a school, getting into school and paying for tuition, identifying topics and areas of coverage.
Recruit and manage freelance writers with expertise in the education space, assign articles, and approve invoices.
Work with experts in the student loans, medical school, law school and college admissions spaces to occasionally write content and expert review content for our site.
Edit articles, slideshows and other content for flow, consistency, tone, audience, brevity, accuracy and SEO.
Employ SEO best practices to determine topics to cover and optimize content for search.
Use Google Analytics to monitor performance of content and inform decisions – ensure our content is positioned to support our consumers and the business strategy.

Please submit a resume and cover letter for consideration.

You should definitely have:

5+ years of professional editing experience at a media company or education publication
Experience writing and editing higher education content
Experience recruiting and managing freelance writers and editors
Experience employing SEO best practices and using SEO tools to inform content strategy decisions
Ability to prioritize assignments and meet deadlines
Expertise and prior experience using AP style
Experience with traffic analytics tools like Google Analytics
Excellent communication and organization skills
Ability to collaborate with multiple teams
Journalism or related degree or equivalent experience

It would be nice if you had: