Public Media Relations Manager (Remote)
Ballotpedia, United States
Job Description
Ballotpedia is a collaborative team of fast learners and creative problem solvers who are eager to work hard to make the world a better place. We believe the world will be a better place if every citizen has access to information to make informed decisions about their vote in every election in which they are eligible to vote: primary, general, and special elections; federal, state, and local offices.
We work diligently to present the available information about elections, candidates, judges, ballot measures, policies, and more in a way that enables our readers to vote with confidence and to act as engaged citizens outside of the polling booth.
Ballotpedia readers, like Ballotpedia staff, are special people.
When we launched in 2007, we did not go out of our way to seek new readers. Starting with our small team of visionary idealists, nerds, and aspiring political journalists, we just wrote the best unbiased online articles we could, especially about ballot measures. Readers found those articles in droves. It turns out there was an unclaimed audience out therepeople who wanted straightforward facts about political issues, and were willing to read at length instead of just scanning the headlines.
If you build it, they will come:'' our readers came to our neutral oasis in growing numbers; we’ve had many millions of lifetime pageviews, we reached nearly half of all voters in 2020, and, in the month surrounding the November 2020 election, we were the 77th most-visited website in the U.S.
We’ve come to realize that we need to meet our readers where they are. In doing so, over the past five years, we’ve grown our email newsletter program from infancy to include more than 1,000,000 opt-in subscribers with more than a dozen newsletters to choose from. We are working in numerous ways to help put our neutral information in front of people at the times when they most need it, including on mobile phones while you’re standing in the voting booth. We firmly believe that our readers, and the mindset we help them cultivate, are essential to the preservation of our great civilization in a world where too many others are fighting to get us all addicted to sensational posts and the irrational decisions they foster.
If this is a mission you’d be willing to work hard to achieve, and if this is a team you’d be willing to work hard withJOIN US.
The Position
As Ballotpedia’s Public and Media Relations Manager you will be responsible for Ballotpedia’s U.S.-focused earned communication channel. This includes cross-functional strategic planning, implementation, measurement and reporting for Ballotpedia’s public, media and influencer relations ongoing programs, initiatives and campaigns.
Reporting to the Director of Communications, you will work within a team of six communications professionals and collaborate within the organization on cross-departmental and organization-wide initiatives.
This is an ideal opportunity for someone who enjoys media relations story mining, ideating, developing messaging and a narrative and pitching to the media. You enjoy managing the process of working with the media in building out feature stories. You get excited about ideas to drive coverage and move those ideas forward into action that yields positive coverage.
Responsibilities
As Public and Media Relations Manager you will:
- Drive U.S. media and influencer outreach and relationships for Ballotpedia product launches, news and the organization overall.
- Manage Ballotpedia’s newsroom, message development, press release/media alert and other written materials and documents as needed.
- Be responsible for ongoing media monitoring, reporting and process improvements.
- Research, develop and implement the organization’s public and media relations plan, with metrics, timelines and reporting mechanisms built-in for Ballotpedia’s Editorial teams, Policy team and candidate outreach.
- Identify, grow and establish relationships with media and key influencers that yield positive coverage for Ballotpedia, with established metrics for success.
- Develop and implement event and/or launch specific public and media relations programming, including key news events (Ballotpedia News Engine) and launch calendar developed in coordination with key internal stakeholders.
- Learn and master Ballotpedia’s taxonomy of bias, including preparing for and attending annual bias training.
- Edit and proofread content in accordance with Ballotpedia’s Style Guide, which is based on the AP Style Guide.
- Interact with co-workers, customers, media and influencers in a professional, helpful, and pleasant manner.
- Present and recommend programs, plans, perspectives, etc. to Ballotpedia’s senior executive team.
- Create and maintain a PR/media relations budget.
- Ensure data and analy