WSJ seeks a newsroom innovation chief

The Wall Street Journal seeks a New York-based editor to oversee a multi-disciplinary department and manage a newsroom-wide process for news innovation. The team will be made up largely of journalist-engineers but also include a designer and regular involvement from editors and reporters.

The team sits within the Journal’s strategy department, which is an incubator for new technologies, audience growth, community and news innovation. The department includes the full range of journalistic talent that makes the Journal one of the leading news organizations in the world — writers, video journalists, graphics designers, editors, product managers, engineers, designers, data scientists, artificial intelligence experts and more — in a lively, collaborative project to discover new offerings of journalistic value. The innovation chief will be a close collaborator with other leaders in the strategy department, as well as leaders of the broader newsroom.

This past fall, the Journal introduced a transparent process for the newsroom to participate in innovation. The Idea Portal and Dashboard is a place anyone in the newsroom can submit an idea and also see which ideas are taken up and why. The ideas are evaluated by a committee that is open to the newsroom, and several great ones have come out of the process so far. The innovation chief will pick up running this process as a portion of the job. The job will also include managing a rotation that will be offered to members of the newsroom to spend a few weeks at a time working with the Innovation team and other teams within Strategy on short-term projects.

The innovation chief should have a mix of product management skills, a strong knowledge of engineering as well as knowledge and passion for journalism. This is truly one of the few journalism jobs out there where the right candidate, versed in these areas, can break through silos and use many different skills. And it’s a job that will have great impact on what The Journal – the most trusted news brand in the country – pursues in terms of news product and feature changes. The innovation chief should be skilled at evaluating ideas for impact, cost and likely success; overseeing discovery and prototype-making; and then building out initial versions of the ideas. The Journal’s large product, design and engineering teams will be close collaborators and provide support at necessary junctures, but this team will have the freedom to move quickly and independently at times.

Responsibilities

• Track a portfolio of ideas that are submitted via the Idea Portal, as well as from the Innovation team itself and informally by editors or other partners.
• Evaluate ideas and create timing plans and tests to prove out which are most likely to succeed and help the newsroom in its goals. This process includes: Evaluating the pros and cons of different choices and understanding the tradeoffs between scope and time to market; Understanding, gathering, and documenting concise user, business and product requirements for [Business/Product], in the form of goals, epics, user stories and acceptance criteria; Assessing user experience and work with design on most effective flows.
• Manage the team to keep on track as they work on a variety of projects. Use judgment to figure out which projects are best served with all-hands-on-deck approach and which are better served in the hands of a smaller set of engineers. Be proactive about cutting bait when things are not panning out.
• Communicate effectively throughout the organization on status, issues, and results.
• Be excited about working in a constantly changing and growing environment where the process is fluid and creative and unique solutions are desired.

Job Requirements

• 3-5 years in online product management experience or news experience in management roles that have involved creating new products and new teams.
• Helpful if experienced working in an agile workflow and leading an agile team.
• Demonstrated success leading, defining and launching consumer products and accessing opportunities backed by deep analysis and metrics.
• Ability to gather user and business requirements and convert them into a winning product vision.
• Ability to communicate and drum up enthusiasm for vision among editorial, design, IA and development teammates.
• Demonstrated leadership with cross-functional teams and the ability to gain cooperation from others at all levels.
• Strong sense of urgency and comfort in a fast-paced, matrixed environment.
• Knowledge of newsroom work flows, journalism standards and business news is helpful.
• University degree in a relevant field.

To apply, go here.