Director of Direct Audience

The Wall Street Journal is seeking a Director of Direct Audience to lead a new team dedicated to building community and relationships with our readers. This role will spearhead a big-picture strategy for how we use tools like newsletters, comments and more with the mission of driving habit, loyalty and retention. 

You will shape the vision and strategy for this new group and oversee execution at a high level, ensuring we deliver a world-class experience—whether onsite in our comments and live Q&As, directly in readers’ inboxes, off-platform, or in real life at subscriber events. 

The ideal candidate is a highly motivated strategic leader who has a proven track record of implementing new ideas with real results, empowering teams to experiment and fostering collaboration across large organizations. They must be able to balance audience needs with editorial judgment and bring a sharp point of view on the future of news. 

This role is based in New York and reports to the Head of Audience Strategy.

You will:

• Develop and implement a newsroom-wide strategy for how we connect directly with audiences, prioritizing initiatives that drive loyalty, habit and community. 

• Dynamically lead and motivate a team of newsletter editors, writers, community producers and moderators, setting a standard of high performance while encouraging creativity, experimentation and professional development.

• Translate our goals into actionable, measurable plans to drive growth, deepen engagement and improve subscriber retention, and evangelize those goals across the organization.

• Champion a culture of audience-first, data-driven decision-making, using audience feedback to continually iterate on our tactics.

• Transform the reader experience by empowering and guiding our journalists as they interact with subscribers in comments, Live Q&As and off-platform spaces.

• Ensure a premium, cohesive experience across all of our flagship and personality-led newsletters.

• Collaborate with content strategy, product, social, multimedia and live journalism teams to seamlessly extend our direct relationships and community-building efforts both on- and off-platform.

• Relentlessly advocate for the reader, ensuring every direct interaction delivers the expertise and value expected of the Journal.

You have:

• 10+ years of experience in digital media with expertise in building communities and relationships between newsrooms and audiences.

• A proven talent for leading, motivating and developing high-performing teams that drive substantial audience growth and subscriber loyalty.

• Exceptional strategic thinking with the ability to identify growth opportunities and build measurable plans to turn them into reality.

• Experience analyzing data to make decisions, and translating that data into a broader narrative. 

• A deep understanding of the shifting media landscape.

• A self-starter mentality, a flexible, can-do attitude and a passion for connecting with audiences.

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, and a demonstrated track record of  influencing senior stakeholders.

• The ability to build trust and collaboration across multiple teams.

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We’re committed to offering competitive and flexible compensation to attract top talent. This pay range reflects our good faith estimate for the role and may vary based on a candidate’s experience, skills, location, and other relevant factors.

For bonus-eligible roles, targets are determined based on multiple considerations, including market benchmarks and individual contributions.

For benefits-eligible roles, we offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package covering health, retirement, wellbeing, and more, along with optional benefits to meet the diverse needs of our employees.