Overview
Vox Media employees thrive on innovation and change while ambitiously seeking to master their subject areas, hone their craft, and improve their communities. We help smart, talented, creative professionals make a meaningful impact in media, technology and the world around them. The Vox Media house of brands includes industry-leading media forces like SB Nation, Eater, The Verge, Vox, Curbed, Recode, Racked and Polygon, and reaches an audience of hundreds of millions, generating over a billion content views each month.
Eater, the national food and restaurant publication, seeks a Features Editor to oversee its current award-winning longform department — which includes reported stories, cultural criticism, and essays — and take it in new directions with video and multimedia storytelling.
Eater’s features department uses the world of restaurants as a prism to explore broader questions of culture, science, art, history, economics, and humanity. This is an editorial position that requires a knowledge of the food-writing landscape and a sustaining interest in food culture, though zero specific food or food media experience is required. Most important in our ideal candidate is meaningful experience editing longform and a drive to cultivate and execute important, ambitious, beautiful stories that will continue Eater’s mission of expanding the boundaries of great food writing.
Requirements:
— Significant experience working with high-quality, long-format stories, and an understanding of the unique editorial demands of long-lead, feature-length pieces published on the web
— A genuine passion for editing; a confident, thoughtful editorial style that inspires writers to do their best work; a consideration for both the writer’s voice and the reader’s experience; and an awareness of the differences in goal and approach when editing reported stories, essays, or opinion pieces
— An uncanny ability to drill directly to the heart of any story, with a sharp structural eye for teasing out universals, strengthening arguments, and sharpening theses
— Knowledge of and excitement for the ways a digital-exclusive platform can be used to tell stories in interesting or unconventional ways
— An ace ability to spot and cultivate new talent, a deep rolodex of terrific writers, good freelancer bedside manner
— Experience with the art/visual aspects of a story, an eye for layout, good photographer and illustrator contacts
— Ability to juggle multiple projects in various stages, maintain a budget, and manage freelance writers and editorial support
— Familiarity with documentary work and video storytelling and contacts in that world
Responsibilities:
— Manage a full slate of feature pieces from start to finish, including soliciting pitches and making assignments, story shaping and line/query editing, art management, production, liaising with copy editors and fact-checkers, and brainstorming social/engagement strategy
— Work closely with the Executive Editor to set the strategy for the Features department, establishing goals and mapping out ways to achieve them
In your cover letter, in addition to explaining who you are and why you’re great, please include links to three feature-length or large-format multimedia stories you’ve edited — and maybe one or two that you’ve written — with explanations of your involvement and why you’re proud of each piece, as well as links to three feature-length stories published in the last two years, from any publication, that you think are spectacular, with explanations of why you think they work.
About working at Vox Media: This is a permanent, full-time position with excellent benefits—including flexible hours and generous parental leave. Vox Media strives to provide comprehensive healthcare options for our employees and to ensure that our healthcare and other benefits are LGBTQ-inclusive. You’ll be joining a group of focused, hard-working, creative people who are passionate about doing work that’s challenging and fun—and who strive to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
We encourage candidates of all experience levels to apply. If the above doesn’t describe you perfectly, please get in touch anyway and tell us why you want to work with us.
Vox Media is committed to building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and everyone is encouraged to apply. Vox Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, disability, national origin, protected veteran status, age, or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state, or local law.