WSJ seeks head of content experiences

The Wall Street Journal is looking for a strategic thinker and builder to help us lead the way in best-in-class, innovative news experiences. The aim is to help the Journal try new things in smart ways, all with a focus on finding things our audiences will find useful, meaningful or inspiring.

You will oversee four teams building our news experiences for the future: the WSJ Innovation Lab, R&D Lab, CMS team, and Storytelling/Editorial Tools team. These teams cover different phases within the news experience development cycle, from ideation to experimentation to automation to building our platforms and tools.

The Innovation Lab runs an open process and dashboard for innovation that we call the Idea Portal; the R&D group uses algorithms, automation and other data-driven processes to create new products, experiences and content; the CMS team is building and rolling out a new CMS; the Storytelling/Editorial Tools team incorporates new ideas into our content experiences for text, video, graphics, and audio. This team manages both the front-end work involved in creating new content experiences and the editorial tools used by journalists around the newsroom.

These are sizable teams with important mandates. Leading them in the smartest ways possible is key to this job.

This is also a leadership role within our broader our strategy, product, engineering and design unit. This group creates all of the Journal’s digital experiences and is leading the Journal’s digital transformation in our newsroom and in our products and technology. You will partner with other leaders in the group to put innovation, experimentation, R&D and digital experiences central to the broader team’s and, indeed the broader newsroom’s work.

You will report to WSJ’s Chief News Strategist & Chief Product and Technology Officer.

You:

Are an experienced manager
Understand news, design thinking, news products and the broader media industry
Understand product development, entrepreneurialism and consumer technologies
Are curious about new ideas and open to reviewing and considering many ideas
Are excited about involving large swaths of our newsroom and company in the ideation, evaluation process through Idea Portal sessions, hackathons, small department meetings and 1:1 meetings.
Are happy to have an open-door policy and to bring many people along on the journey.

To apply, go here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.