Culture & Life Editor

About the Role

Newsday is seeking an ambitious, audience-focused Culture & Life Editor to lead a team of talented journalists. We are reimagining how we cover life on Long Island, building a modern, digital-first report focused on the issues, experiences, and conversations that shape how people live. This editor understands that culture is all-encompassing—it’s about affordability, identity, family, community, work, food, faith, lifestyle, and the forces changing life on Long Island. The Culture & Life Editor will lead storytelling across Newsday’s platforms and emerging digital formats, creating coverage that builds audience habit, drives subscriber engagement, and delivers journalism people can't find anywhere else.

What You'll Lead

You'll oversee coverage that helps readers navigate, understand, and enjoy life on Long Island, blending service journalism, enterprise reporting, audience insights, cultural storytelling, and accountability journalism. Coverage areas include:

• Affordability and quality of life
• Food, dining, and local experiences
• Entertainment and things to do
• Family life and generational change
• Long Island identity and culture
• Community trends and social shifts
• Consumer and service journalism
• Home and lifestyle
• Faith, traditions, and celebrations
• Emerging cultural conversations

Responsibilities

• Lead daily and long-range planning for Culture & Life coverage.
• Develop enterprise stories, recurring franchises, newsletters, and audience-focused products.
• Identify emerging conversations, trends, and cultural shifts before competitors.
• Use audience insights, analytics, and newsroom metrics to inform editorial priorities.
• Partner across the newsroom, including audience, visuals, product, and video teams, to produce compelling digital journalism.
• Elevate service journalism that helps readers navigate everyday life on Long Island.
• Develop distinctive local reporting that cannot be found elsewhere.
• Coach reporters to strengthen sourcing, storytelling, digital skills, and audience engagement.
• Ensure coverage reflects the diversity, complexity, and evolving demographics of Long Island.
• Collaborate with audience and product teams on subscriber growth and retention strategies.
• Build editorial plans around major seasonal, cultural, and community moments.

Requirements

• Significant editing and newsroom leadership experience in a digital-first environment.
• A strong understanding of audience behavior, digital storytelling, and subscriber-focused journalism.
• Experience leading enterprise, service, and culture coverage.
• Exceptional news judgment and storytelling instincts.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across departments and platforms.
• A deep curiosity about how people live and the issues that matter most to local communities.

Schedule

This position is hybrid with a three-day-per-week, in-office requirement.

Pay

The salary range for this role is $155,000 - $165,000, commensurate with experience.