COMPANY BACKGROUND

Sightline Media Group is the leading news organization covering military, defense, public sector, federal technology, C4ISR and cyber defense. Our independent, award-winning journalism offers coverage from around the globe, from Sightline headquarters in the Washington, DC area to bureaus and correspondents in the U.S. and around the world. Sightline Media offers our business clientele a wide range of platforms to reach the market. From digital and mobile solutions to events, thought leadership, publications, video and custom options, Sightline works with clients on opportunities that have credibility, integrity, engagement and impact.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We are looking for a unicorn—or, really, someone who wants to become a unicorn. Our digital initiatives span a vast array of responsibilities—SEO, newsletters, analytics, biz-dev, commerce, CMSes and third-party software platforms, product development, social media—and those stretch across numerous high-quality brands, from the military-news publications of Sightline to HistoryNet.com to Sunset Magazine. In short, the Digital Initiatives Associate is tasked with helping figure out how the Internet works, and making it work on behalf of the company. This position requires excellent writing skills and a scrupulous eye for detail, but also a degree of technological fluency and curiosity: You don’t need to be a coder (though if you are, awesome!), but you do need a good grounding in, say, how Google and Facebook work, what an RSS feed is, and the structural principles behind WordPress. Getting all of this right lets us both produce excellent journalism and advance as a business.

EXPERIENCE

• Three (3) or more years working in media—ideally in editorial, but other digital, strategy, dev, or managerial experience is interesting, too!
• Exceptional writing skills
• Serious organizational abilities, especially re Slack, email, calendars, and shared documents
• Practical knowledge of Microsoft Excel, Google Docs/Sheets, Adobe Photoshop
• Experience with product development and/or coding (e.g., Javascript, PHP, HTML5, Zephyr) is a plus

RESPONSIBILITIES

Under the guidance of the Senior Director of Digital Initiatives, you’ll help implement our strategies across multiple departments and projects. On a typical day, you might: write product copy for an e-commerce shop; tweak newsletter templates; write a grabby headline; train new employees on SEO standards; build and maintain tracking documents; and QA a redesigned website. We need someone who not only knows how to think about these things logically and creatively but will—enthusiastically and independently—make them happen.

• SEO: Set standards and ensure they’re followed across the organization; help editorial teams with research
• Newsletters: Build and tweak templates, develop new series
• Analytics: Use Google Analytics and Parsely to track everything and deliver reports to company stakeholders
• E-commerce: Develop, track, and promote new products, write and edit copy
• Affiliate commerce: Manage affiliate relationships; research story ideas; track revenue
• CMSes: Adjust settings, manage access, and troubleshoot issues in WordPress and Arc; help conceive new back-end features; participate in ongoing redesigns
• Research, evaluate, set up, and manage third-party software platforms
• Social media: Set standards and ensure they’re followed; track analytics; troubleshoot problems; manage access

PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS

• Insatiable curiosity and eagerness to experiment
• Thrives in both startup and corporate environments
• Willingness to take risks and break things—and then learn how to fix them

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s degree