Boosted by growth, CNBC.com adding editorial positions

CNBC has reported double-digit growth in visitors to its website this year, making it the fastest-growing business news site.

With that growth has come an expansion of the editorial staff of its online operation. The job openings can be found here.

Jeffrey McCracken joined CNBC as managing editor of CNBC.com in April. In this role, he oversees digital business news

Previously, he spent almost seven years at Bloomberg building an impressive M&A team. Prior to Bloomberg, McCracken was a business reporter at The Wall Street Journal and an automotive reporter for the Detroit Free Press.

McCracken spoke with Talking Biz News by email about the editorial expansion. What follows is an edited transcript.

What’s behind the additional positions for CNBC Digital?

CNBC’s goal is to become the destination for all things money and these new reporting and editing positions are crucial to our growth strategy.

We have already made tremendous progress this year alone – we continue to break new records each month, we have the sharpest year-over-year growth among the top 10 business news properties, and we’ve moved up four spots from No. 8 in February 2016 to No. 4 in the business news category for the second straight month.

How many positions are new?

Of the eight positions we have posted in the last month, seven of them are completely new with more positions opening in the next few weeks.

What’s the percentage increase in editorial staff?

It is a moving target, but the goal is to keep adding staff and building out our newsroom over the next few years to bulk up our coverage in key areas.

How do you hope that will affect readership?

We built out our coverage of the technology sector in San Francisco, adding a new editor and several reporters. The response so far has been tremendous with a rapidly growing number of new readers. The plan is to duplicate that strategy in other coverage areas over the coming months and years.

Any specific content areas CNBC is trying to boost its audience with?

Probably the next area of focus is to build our political coverage out of Washington, DC, given we are looking for a DC editor and two reporters there right now. Business stories on the Trump administration, taxes and the regulatory world are core to the CNBC audience.