Senior Editor, Visuals, CNN

Your New Role

CNN's global Visuals team is seeking a senior editor to help lead our visual journalism during critical late-day and evening news hours. This is an editorial leadership and people-management role for an experienced visual journalist who can guide breaking news coverage, shape ambitious enterprise projects and help teams produce clear, accurate and distinctive storytelling across formats.

Role Accountabilities

• Set editorial priorities for the Visuals team during late-day and evening news hours, ensuring strong communication and handoffs across time zones.
• Anticipate breaking news coverage needs and lead visual responses across a wide variety of scenarios.
• Assign and edit graphics, maps, visual stories, interactives, annotations and other formats for breaking news, daily coverage and medium- to long-term enterprise projects.
• Edit visual and data-driven stories, including both graphics and text, ensuring clear framing, strong reporting and journalism-first execution.
• Review story structure, design, data analysis, visualizations and interactive storytelling to ensure they meet rigorous editorial and design standards.
• Identify visual opportunities across CNN’s coverage and work proactively with editors and reporters on other desks to develop strong approaches.
• Lead major projects in partnership with multiple teams and stakeholders, establishing clear expectations, timelines and decision-making processes.
• Collaborate with platform and distribution teams to strengthen the framing and packaging of visual stories across home screens, apps and off-platform channels.
• Maintain an organized view of assignments, priorities and handoffs for global coverage.
• Manage, mentor and support a group of visual journalists, providing thoughtful feedback and helping teammates develop their skills and careers.
• Refined workflows, document processes and contribute to a collaborative culture of experimentation and skill-sharing.
• Apply audience insights to help shape story ideas, formats and approaches that resonate with and serve CNN’s audiences.

Qualifications & Experience

• At least 7 years of experience in a newsroom or comparable editorial environment, including experience editing visual or data-driven journalism.
• Experience managing visual journalists and supporting their day-to-day work, long-term development and career growth.
• Impeccable news judgment and the ability to lead calmly and decisively during breaking news.
• A proven ability to edit both visual storytelling and text, from early framing and reporting through final publication.
• Strong visual judgment and experience reviewing story design, data visualization, interactives, maps and other graphics formats.
• A track record of identifying strong story ideas and pushing storytelling beyond obvious or incremental approaches.
• A strong representative of the Visuals team within a wider organization: you build positive cross-team relationships and champion visual journalism as essential to coverage.
• Experience editing or leading elections coverage, including familiarity with election results, political data and map-driven storytelling, is strongly preferred.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort working with senior newsroom leaders, reporters, editors, designers, data journalists and developers.
• Experience balancing fast-turn breaking news coverage with medium- and long-term enterprise projects.
• A reader-first perspective and strong commitment to clarity, accuracy and multiplatform storytelling.
• Familiarity with modern data, mapping, design and visualization tools is helpful, but deep technical expertise is not required.
• Curiosity and openness to experimenting with new storytelling formats, platforms and emerging technologies.