Hot journalism job: Engagement editor

Newspapers and other online news media are desperate to increase their traffic and boost their active readers. They are following the same path as Tronc in treating journalism as pieces of content that can be funneled into social media and distribution services.
A hot journalism buzzword is “engagement.” Not couples planning to get married, but readers finding articles that they want to share and interact with through likes, retweets and posting comments. Engagement also means keeping readers longer on your website and giving them more content (and advertising) to consume.
A quick search of LinkedIn reveals an explosion of news media sites hiring “engagement editors.” More than 600 websites have hired engagement editors, most within the last year or so.
News media sites with engagement editors include GQ, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Bloomberg, Vox Media, Recode, the Verge and the Huffington Post, to name a few. Many outlets have more than one engagement editor.
Another job title that seems to be fast growing among media outlets is “chief digital officer.”

Related reading:

New Journalism Buzzwords (Medium; April 22, 2014)

Photo: Engagement photo by Brandon Atkinson.