Audience and Partnerships Editor – Investigative Center

Reports to: Director, Audience Engagement

Location: Flexible within the Deep South, preferably Louisiana or Mississippi

Overview

Deep South Today — the nonprofit newsroom network that includes Mississippi Today in Jackson, Verite News in New Orleans, and The Current in Lafayette — launched a first-of-its-kind partnership with The New York Times to expand investigative journalism across the Deep South.

The Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center aims to produce high-impact journalism that holds powerful people and institutions accountable, digging deep into the systems and decisions shaping life in the Deep South. We are seeking a dedicated Audience and Partnerships Editor to ensure our investigative journalism reaches communities across the Deep South.

About the role

The Audience and Partnerships Editor role sits at the intersection of editorial judgment and evidence — collaborative, rigorous in approach, and focused on measurable outcomes. You will work closely with the Director of Audience Engagement and the Lead Editor for the Investigative Reporting Center to turn insights into actionable recommendations and build repeatable audience practices to maximize the reach and engagement of our investigative stories.

Success in this role requires the ability to enthusiastically coordinate with multiple partners and deliver on three core job functions listed below. The ideal candidate will have 5+ years of direct experience and is open to working weekends, as required.

Why this role matters: Investigations and deeply reported pieces that can shape lives, communities, and policies require significant time and resources. As the Investigative Center ramps up its output, strategic distribution partnerships will be critical to ensure these deeply reported pieces reach new audiences beyond our traditional digital platforms. Sitting within our centralized Audience Hub, this role will be key to amplifying the reach of our high-impact journalism and converting new audiences to engaged readers and future supporters.

By cultivating external relationships with nonprofits, newsrooms, schools, libraries, churches, community centers, even influencers, you will multiply our distribution capabilities and alleviate operational bottlenecks for our existing Audience Editors seated within our local newsrooms.

Key Responsibilities

Co-Publishing & Community Distribution

• Actively secure partners and external newsrooms to co-publish, republish and distribute DST Investigative Center, DST Studios and local newsrooms stories, social posts and video content.
• Identify trusted information stewards, including community leaders, organizers, creators, influencers and cultivate vital relationships to maximize the distribution of our journalism to new audiences and get our reporting directly into the hands of most-impacted communities.
• Identify opportunities for building mentions and citations for our reporting and Investigative Center reporters, including TV interviews.
• Own the operations for distribution of the Center’s journalism and all relevant assets to newsroom partners and stewards in a timely manner that builds trust and strengthens stakeholder partnerships.
• Serve as a specialized, horizontal support role across the entire Deep South Today network for distribution of journalism through editorial partnerships.
• Serve as the editorial curator for the Deep South Today website, ensuring stories and videos published on individual local newsroom sites are seamlessly aggregated and highlighted in one unified digital hub.
• Ensure stories are SEO optimized, tagged and curated to display interests, geographic coverage, and diversity in communities.
• Be…