Growth editors, org structure and what I’m doing for the next three months.

What exactly does a growth editor do in a newsroom? This is the question I’m tackling from all sides this fall, during my last semester of grad school in CUNY’s social journalism program.

I’m spending the semester working with Chalkbeat, a nonprofit education news publication that’s looking for ways to meaningfully grow its audience (including hiring a Director of Product and Growth).

Chalkbeat is trying to figure out exactly who it should consider its audience, and the best ways to connect with those people, given limited resources. (Sound familiar, every other newsroom out there?) But at this moment in time, they are considering different growth approaches: just doing better journalism? doing different kinds of journalism? refining distribution approaches? continuing engagement efforts? What’s the right mix of all those strategies?

So here are the questions I’m looking to answer for Chalkbeat (and you!), through research and talking to lots of people in the industry:

• What does a “normal” day of a newsroom growth editor look like?
• How do places come to define “meaningful growth”?
• What are some examples of growth strategies that have worked for others?
• What audience growth tactics go beyond just distribution?
• Where does responsibility for audience growth lie within an organization’s structure?
• How do editorial, product and growth teams interact (both in news and non-news companies)?

As I tackle each of these questions, I’ll write up what I find and post it here on Medium. CUNY’s social journalism program has a strong bias toward learning in public whenever possible, and Chalkbeat shares that passion for openness, so it only makes sense that whatever I find, I should share widely. After all, I’m going to be calling all of you to hear about your experiences, to ask you to draw your organization’s structure, and to open up about what growth strategies have worked (or not) for you.