Head of Community

This role reports to the head of audience in the newsroom. This role leads the development and execution of a community engagement strategy focused on loyalty, retention, and trust. Partnering across product, marketing, and editorial, it builds deeper reader relationships through rewards, interactive formats, and participatory journalism. The position ensures respectful, constructive discourse, embeds reader insight into decision-making, and drives innovation in engagement approaches. Managing a high-performing team, it sets clear goals, measures impact, and champions the value of community across the newsroom and business.

Responsibilities

• Community strategy: Design and implement a community engagement strategy aligned with business objectives, with a clear focus on loyalty, retention, and brand trust
• Cross-functional partnerships: Collaborate with product and marketing teams to deliver a seamless, rewarding reader experience that fosters long-term engagement.
• Reader relationships: Develop initiatives that deepen connections with readers, including Times+ rewards, reader surveys, events (virtual and in-person), comment moderation, and the integration of reader voices into journalism.
• Insight & feedback: Establish systems for listening to readers, distilling insights, and embedding feedback into editorial and product decision-making.
• Innovation & formats: Test and scale new approaches to engagement, from interactive journalism and live chats to polls, audience panels, and other participatory tools.
• Leadership: Lead and develop a high-performing team of community editors and audience specialists, setting ambitious goals and supporting their professional growth.
• Respectful discourse: Uphold moderation standards and community guidelines to ensure healthy, constructive discussion across platforms.
• Measurement & impact: Define clear success metrics, track performance against goals, and communicate the impact of community initiatives to the wider business.
• Future opportunities: Continuously explore and adopt new technologies and approaches to enhance reader experience and team efficiency.
• Newsroom visibility: Represent the opportunity for journalists to engage with readers in informal and formal channels to encourage the newsroom to support our community goals

Skills and experience

• Leadership and people management skills, with experience setting ambitious goals, mentoring teams, and driving high performance
• Change management: introduced new technologies or processes that improved efficiency, collaboration, and impact
• Ability to distill editorial and audience insights from data, using platform-specific metrics to inform decisions and strategy
• Persuasive presentation and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and secure buy-in across the business
• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to solve problems, negotiate positive outcomes, and manage sensitive situations
• Proven experience working collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams, driving shared outcomes through aligned expertise and KPIs
• A strong understanding of editorial compliance, regulatory issues, and community moderation best practices

About News UK

One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, Talk and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local radio stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multiplatform brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News

Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy, which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity and inclusivity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have 13 employee led networks and groups that support our strategy and connect like minded employees socially.

Benefits

Some of our benefits include:

• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access
• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions
• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes
• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme
• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books
• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling
• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%
• 30 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to perform to their best when applying for a role. If you would like to receive any information in a different way or for us to do anything differently to support you apply for any of our roles please contact us on [email protected]