We are tremendously excited to announce this role, in partnership with LION Publishers, to help early-stage newsrooms turn impactful journalism into meaningful, sustainable revenue. RANGE was one of only 12 organizations nationwide chosen for this program and LION is putting a ton of effort into making this a success. It’s an unbelievably cool thing.
For longtime readers and listeners, this is a vital next step in our growth as an organization. For those coming here for the first time, have a look around!
If you’re interested in learning more about RANGE and the role, read the position description below and apply here. — Luke
Audience & Membership Manager
JOB DETAILS
Start Date: This position begins early January, 2022
Salary: $55,000 – $60,000 per year
Hours: Full-time, 40 hours, approximately 5 days per week, flexible schedule
Benefits: Healthcare, company ownership (we are a worker-owned cooperative), profit share
Time Off: Three weeks paid time off per year and paid holidays
Location: Spokane, Washington with flexibility to work from home or at our office.
APPLICATION DETAILS
Please apply here and submit the following by 11:59pm on December 5, 2021
- Your resume
- Two (2) references
- Answers to the included short-answer questions
Note: A cover letter is not required
We expect to hold interviews the weeks of Dec. 6 and Dec. 13, and will notify candidates about our decision by December 17.
OUR MISSION & HOW YOU FIT
RANGE Media believes that powerful, lasting change comes when we give people the tools they need to take action and demand better for themselves and their communities. We are building movement journalism in Spokane, WA and the greater Inland Northwest to meet the needs of people and communities affected by injustice in all its forms.
This Audience and Revenue Manager role is vital to the success of our mission, and will be responsible for creating and deploying audience development and membership development plans for our young organization. We’ve spent the last 18 months developing our vision and creating our first two products, a podcast and a newsletter. We’ve grown a powerful, issues–focused podcast and done some truly meaningful analysis and original reporting (en español). We’re getting ready to do a lot more of it. (Read more about RANGE at the bottom of this description)
Now it’s time to share Range with as many people as possible.
That’s why we’re seeking someone with a passion for journalism that highlights and amplifies marginalized communities, and who has experience developing audiences and turning those audiences into customers.
The ideal candidate loves to be part of a team, loves to help people feel like they’re part of a community, and wants to help build our organization and missional impact by significantly growing our audience and revenue.
This position is part of a national program to help startup digital newsrooms achieve scale and sustainability. As such, our Audience and Revenue Manager will not only have RANGE’s internal team to lean on, we have the resources and expertise of leading news revenue experts from around the nation.
We’re trying to build something this community has never had, and as such, we are committed to learning, growing and, ultimately, succeeding together.
BEYOND BENEFITS (Though we have those, too)
- FLEXIBILITY: A flexible work environment & schedule with plenty of autonomy to do your best work.
- IMPACT: The opportunity to meaningfully shape a young community news organization.
- MEANING: A foundational role in an organization that exists to support the people news organizations traditionally leave behind, and help bring more people into meaningful civic engagement.
- OWNERSHIP: RANGE is a worker-owned cooperative. We are building something special together and we believe everyone deserves a share in its prosperity.
- PROFESSIONAL GROWTH: This position is supported by leading news revenue experts at Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers as part of a program to help you develop your news revenue knowledge, skills and support you in developing the strategies and tactics that will help Range succeed.
YOUR QUALIFICATIONS and APPROACH
We’re looking for a results-oriented, creative thinker who likes working with passionate people in a collaborative environment and is dedicated to learning and continuous improvement.
There are no minimum education or experience requirements, but the candidate should have played an integral role in building an audience and/or growing revenue for an organization.
That can mean a lot of things. Maybe you’re an audience person who’s excited about learning revenue. Maybe you’re a revenue person who wants to get into audience-building. Maybe you’re a community organizer who really knows how to connect with and build relationships with people. Bring it on!
BENEFICIAL SKILLS and EXPERIENCE
- A passion for connecting people to cool, useful things (audience development)
- A passion for getting people to support the things they love (membership revenue)
- A real desire to make sure products designed to help people are working well (feedback & continual improvement)
- Familiarity with CRMs and analytics tools
- Spotting trends in data and turning them into strategies
- A love for continually trying things, measuring success, tweaking, and trying again.
- A solid understanding of and passion for journalism
- A passion for serving the needs of communities.
- A drive to help early-stage organizations grow, learn, operationalize & generally kick ass
- Must be willing to learn and utilize the following tools:
- Slack, Google Drive, Google Analytics and Mailchimp.
- We currently publish on Substack, but will be transitioning to a platform that can better support our long-term goals. This role will help the team assess the engagement and revenue viability of the platforms we’re considering.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!
Some great candidates might not check all these boxes or hold important skills we haven’t listed. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself and how you could make a difference in this role.
Our mission is to amplify marginalized voices and the needs of overlooked communities, and we strongly encourage members of those communities to apply, including Black, Indigenous and people of color, LGBTQIA2S+ people, women, people with disabilities and those who grew up in or are currently experiencing poverty.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
This role is responsible for expanding our audience and growing revenue, and helping the whole team build our news products in a way that maximizes both while serving our mission. You’ll:
- Lead efforts to engage with our audience and the larger community
- Growing the audience we have
- Turning that audience into paying members
- Research, build and execute plans for:
- Year-round audience development
- Year-round membership revenue development
- One yearly membership drive
- Develop and run monthly and quarterly growth tests for both audience and revenue.
- Produce monthly reports for audience and member revenue growth.
- Create and maintain a detailed audience and revenue bible on best practices as they emerge.
- Collaborate with a small team, helping us actualize the mission of RANGE through the specific lens of audience and revenue development.
This position is partially funded by the LION-Facebook Revenue Growth Fellowship, a program run by LION Publishers, an association for independent news publishers, and funded by the Facebook Journalism Project. This position will be one of Lion’s Revenue Growth Fellows and will have the opportunity to participate in ongoing training and coaching, and to learn from other fellows in the cohort. As a fellow, you’ll:
- Attend a 12-week (virtual) training program hosted by LION Publishers’ News Revenue Fellowship.
- Attend regular coaching sessions over the two-year period of the fellowship
- Produce regular progress reports for the LION News Revenue Fellowship and share what you learn
A LITTLE MORE ABOUT US
RANGE is a media organization for people who love the Inland Northwest and want to make it better. We are creating an anti-racist, anti-colonial, class-focused newsroom from the ground, up. Our mission is to report as close to people’s lived experiences as possible and directly serve the needs of community members at the margins while providing all news consumers with powerful storytelling from angles traditional news outlets either can’t access or ignore.
We believe that when journalism really focuses on lifting traditionally marginalized and disregarded people — helping them get informed, take action and find their voice — journalism has the power to transform communities. We’re testing that theory right now, in Spokane. You can read our latest vision document here.
We are a small but growing team dedicated to a model of distributed leadership known as holacracy. RANGE itself is nested within an ecosystem of other worker-owned cooperatives that share resources and expertise.
We embrace remote work and also believe deeply in face-to-face interactions, problem solving and team-building. As such: we encourage working from home and we also keep an office at a beautiful local coworking space for when you need head-down focus time or heads-up brainstorming and discussion time.
Range is entering its second full year of existence and our team has been working in this community for decades, both in journalism, workers rights, community organizing and community-building. We’ve lived here our whole lives, we love it dearly, and we have a clear vision of how an independent press focused on the needs of normal people can change this place for the better.
