Director of Coverage and Planning
The USA TODAY NETWORK/Gannett is seeking a Director of Coverage and Planning for our USA TODAY Network Photo and Video team. This position is a key leadership position on our USA TODAY Network Photo & Video team responsible for ensuring high-quality, consistent, and coordinated photo and video coverage across the USA TODAY Network. This includes breaking news, daily assignments, special projects, planned events, and more; topic areas include but are not limited to news, politics, entertainment, and sports.
The Director of Coverage and Planning is a seasoned editorial leader with demonstrated experience managing video and photo coverage teams at a national or international level in high-stakes situations. You'll work with top editors, producers, and content executives across the USA TODAY Network to ensure visual coverage and newsgathering aligns with and supports a wide range of coverage and storytelling efforts and is coordinated to help the USA TODAY Network Photo & Video team hit audience and revenue goals.
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Working with other video and photo leaders on the USA TODAY Network Photo and Video team, you'll help plan event, breaking news and tentpole coverage based on an assessment of resources including internal staff (national and local) plus freelancers and third-party sources. You'll ensure there is a look ahead calendar and help make photo, gallery and video assignments to ensure the team has coverage ahead of during and after planned and breaking events. Creating and maximizing efficient workflows utilizing programs such as Microsoft Lists, Forms, Planner, Teams, etc. is essential to building a solid foundation of this coverage network. The Director will manage a team of assignment and planning editors and will interface regularly with network editors, section editors, executive producers, video series leads, and audience teams.
This role is pivotal to driving decision-making in editorial and coverage efforts, maximizing resources, and ensuring that we are covering the right things in the right ways. This leader must ensure we stay on budget for travel and freelance needs. Strong leadership and management skills are essential, as is the ability to quickly gather and analyze inputs from a variety of editorial stakeholders toward coverage decisions. The Director, and their team, will be responsible for conveying the scope and goals of field assignments to multimedia journalists in the field, ensuring video and photo newsgathering and storytelling aligns with coverage, series, and / or special project needs.
This role is remote and can be based anywhere in the US, except for Alaska and Hawaii.
Responsibilities:
- Create a unified newsgathering network across national and local USA TODAY Network properties.
- Identify dedicated newsgathering resources in strategic locations nationwide, including the development of a comprehensive freelancer roster for coverage in areas without Network coverage.
- Categorize freelancers by region, expertise, and availability.
- Identify needs and gaps across our established network of local properties by conducting a detailed analysis to identify areas without allocated assets (regions, beats) and determine the types of content most frequently required in these areas.
- Create a recruitment push targeting experienced videographers and photographers through Gannett's exciting network, job boards, forums, and social media platforms for outreach.
- Establish clear guidelines and expectations for video and photo assigning and detailed information upon submission.
- Implement communication protocols to ensure seamless coordination between freelancers and the central team.
- Oversee a team of assignment managers and planning coordinators who manage an editorial planning calendar of tent poles and events, curating information about events from partners across the USA TODAY Network's newsrooms.
- Create a clear assignment system to ensure all stakeholders know what is by done and where our staff resources and by who.
- Represent video and photo newsgathering at editorial planning meetings for tent poles and events, ensuring that video and photo are part of comprehensive coverage plans.
Requirements:
- Bachelor's or master's degree in communications, journalism or related field or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 10+years of professional experience, including newsgathering experience at a national media company, 5+years of digital experience,5+ years of leadership/management experience.
- Understanding of digital media platforms and social media.
- Experience coordinating and planning coverage.
- Strong editorial decision-making skills.
- Strong leadership skills, ability to manage employees.
- Understanding of web technology, CMS (Content Management System) systems, photo editing, digital video, digital audio, live streaming, video editing, and web analytics.
- Excellent communications skills, online and in person, with the community and fellow journalists.
- Strong organization skills and workflow management is essential.
- Works collaboratively with a passionate and highly motivated team of videographers, photographers, reporters, editors, and producers.
- Experience using After Effects, Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop is preferred.
Application Instructions
We are eager to learn more about you and how you fit this role. When you apply, don't limit your upload to a resume; show us what you've done. To do so, put together a single document file that includes the following, in this order:
1. Your resume - one to two pages.
2. A cover letter that outlines how you would approach the job.
It is important that these items be assembled into a single document and uploaded in PDF format. Completing these steps will ensure that your application receives the highest consideration.
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The annualized base salary for this role will range between $84,375 and $200,531 . Variable compensation is not reflected in these figures and based on the role, may be applicable. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, location, and union representation, if applicable.