New closing date 23 July: join our all-volunteer team as Managing Editor

By Africa in Words on 23 July , 2020 • ( 0 )

We’ve extended our closing date: now end of day, Thursday 23 July 2020 .

We are looking for a new team member join us as our Managing Editor.

AiW is an entirely voluntary independent collective with a wide reach – currently we have a 12,000+ strong following across our platforms – made up of readers from over 100 countries.

Our site is run by the collaborative effort of a small, close-knit editorial team – Comms, Reviews, and General/Admin – who work remotely with our Editorial Board.

Together we aim to provide a supportive, flexible platform for timely, forward-thinking creative-critical comment, about and from both new and established contributors — writers, artists and makers, critics, educators and thinkers, curators, directors, publishers, and arts managers, among others — for a peer network to come together around a common focus on literary and cultural production and Africa.

We all contribute, but the Managing Editor will have overall responsibility for general maintenance and management of our teams that work on the blog day-to-day, combining a practical focus with a people-centred view.

This role, like all our roles, is unpaid – AiW runs on zero budget: joining the AiW community and its wider networks at this point is an opportunity to find and extend like-minded peer support, engage with and support our broader networks and connections through the blog, and to gain relevant practical, hands-on administrative and management experience for a number of future career pathways (into publishing, journalism, other roles in the creative industries, or those in academia, for example).

This is also a new role. We have created it because we are looking for someone who will thrive in a peer-team environment in order to maintain effective publishing scheduling and the production of the kinds of content we have become known for, as well as enabling and supporting workload processes for our team members.

Key responsibilities include:

connecting up our teams and blog communities across a variety of relevant platforms, and acting as a hub point for our other editors and editorial assistants (which might include recruitment, and will include on-boarding and welcoming any new team members);
maintaining effective workflow and administrative systems for the blog, and suggesting others where there may be gaps;
organising and leading the regular remote meetings that bring us together to brainstorm and share content and ideas (monthly team check-ins and quarterly general meetings);
and reviewing blog performance and stats to determine areas of improvement and development.

We also warmly encourage everyone on our team to contribute content as AiW authors and to consider the blog as an opportunity to share interests and passions, as well as to gain experience publishing content in the online environment — editing, laying up and publishing our Guest posts — if attractive.

The role requires a commitment of approx. 7 hours per week (to be worked flexibly), with an additional 2.5 hours per month (again, approx.) for team meetings; the initial period is for one year, with the potential for extension. Again, we need to reiterate that the role will be unpaid: we receive no revenue or funding.

You will need to have access to email and a reliable internet connection in order to fulfill the role. Applicants can be based anywhere in the world and we are particularly keen to incorporate voices with strong perspectives from/on the African continent in this crucial extension of our current team.

This is an ideal position for someone who:

is a people-person, self-motivated and motivating, with highly developed communication and interpersonal skills to build and maintain effective relationships
is invested in working collaboratively with people at all levels while operating remotely, and bringing a number of small teams together through common goals and aims
is proficient in administrative, organisational and time management skills, with a record of reliability and honesty
is able to offer both a regular weekly commitment to the everyday work of managing the blog, and a monthly capacity to organise and host our more strategy-oriented, forward-looking team meetings
demonstrates a commitment to AiW’s aims for quality content delivery, with an active interest in African cultural production and a familiarity with AiW’s general direction and content (current print-culture, literature, film or the visual arts trends, among others)
has an active interest in blogging and/or an understanding of the flexibility and dynamic/time-sensitive work required for successful online publishing.

Some experience managing WordPress, Google suites, Slack sites or other equivalent platforms and apps is a plus, but we can provide training for the online platforms we currently use (basic HTML would also be an advantage). Similarly, familiarity with the social media platforms the blog is active on (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) would be helpful, while a working understanding of their interplay with a website and an established readership would be an advantage, but is not required.

To apply, please send your CV and a supporting statement to africainwords2011@gmail.com, with ‘Managing Editor’ in the email subject line.

We look forward to hearing from you. Closing date now extended to 23 July 2020.

It is not a requirement but it may be helpful as a focus point to consider and respond, in brief, to the three questions below as part of your supporting statement:

Why would you like to join Africa in Words? (approx. 100 words for an upper-limit might be a good guide)
Perhaps more specifically, what would you like AiW to be able to give you in terms of your professional or career development? (again, approx. 100 words as an upper limit)
What strengths, experience, knowledge, skills and/or networks would you like to bring to the role and enable AiW in its aims as a platform for African creative, critical, and cultural production? (max. 300 words)