The San Francisco Standard is seeking an experienced, plugged-in and imaginative editor to lead our culture section.

Operating out of our fast-growing in-person newsroom, you will oversee a team of three to four staff writers and curate a roster of freelancers. You'll edit features and news stories covering the breadth of San Francisco's cultural landscape: music, fine arts, architecture, sex and relationships, workplace mores, parenting trends, pet culture, drug culture, party culture, etc. You'll be intimately familiar with the city's major players, influencers, connectors, and colorful characters and organize coverage around them in the forms of profiles, power lists, trend stories, and as-told-to's.

The ideal candidate has a magazine sensibility and an internet addict's antenna for the new and weird. You must be a story mechanic with a knack for structure, language, grabby ledes, and even grabbier headlines. You should love working shoulder-to-shoulder with photo editors and designers to make sure every story pops on any screen where readers might encounter it. You have a drive to publish stories that people will talk about at dinner parties, share in group chats, link to in their Substacks, and share promiscuously on social media. You must also enjoy digging into audience data to better understand what pushes readers' buttons.

You should be comfortable managing experienced journalists and developing early-career journalists. You know how to both give and receive honest feedback in a thoughtful, professional way.

This is a full-time, in-office position.

Responsibilities

• Assign and edit daily news stories and features
• Manage 3-4 staff writers
• Build roster of regular freelance contributors
• Pitch and develop recurring columns or features that can be programmed on a weekly basis
• Understand The Standard's audience and help establish our voice, identity and sensibility through editorial and visual choices
• Help identify opportunities for extensions of The Standard's journalism into new formats — live events, videos, podcasts, etc.; work with other departments to bring those opportunities to fruition
• Help recruit top-tier talent to the Culture desk and other parts of our fast-growing newsroom
• Lead your team's participation in newsroom-wide initiatives, including election coverage and tentpole editorial undertakings
• Foster reader engagement through social content, call-outs, AMAs and other means.

Qualifications

• At least 8 years of proven experience as an editor; experience in a top-tier national or regional publication
• Excellent writing, editing, and proofreading skills, with a strong command of grammar, AP style and journalistic ethics.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with writers, colleagues and readers.
• Familiarity with digital publishing platforms, e-mail newsletters, audience engagement best practices and social media platforms
• Understanding of digital audience metrics and measurement techniques and a passion for data-driven insights

If you are a seasoned editor with a passion for cultural coverage, a commitment to journalistic integrity and a drive to shape public discourse, we invite you to apply.

The pay range for this role is $110,000 to $170,000. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate. We encourage you to apply even if you don't fit the preferred qualifications of the job.