Many publishers have newsletter editors, few have newsletter directors
From time to time we do a little research about newsletters at Revue. This time we were interested in the composition of the teams producing newsletters for publishers. Who are the people writing and editing newsletters in newsrooms? What are their job titles and who do they report to?
Many publishers use Revue as their tool for editorial newsletters. But we wanted to get a broader perspective. To look beyond our user base, we created a brief survey asking newsletter staff about their job titles and reporting lines.
The answers were quite interesting. The majority of newsroom staff working on newsletters reported having the job title of “newsletter editor”. Their managers, however, in most cases are not newsletter specialists but have broader editorial responsibility.
Job titles in newsletters
The first survey question was “If you work in newsletters, what is your job title?”.
We provided a range of common job titles for newsletter staff to choose from with the option of specifying a different one if needed. The result, as shown in the chart below, was a broad range of job titles with “newsletter writer or editor” leading the way at just below one third of the responses.
When looking at the range of job titles, we can see a split between editorial and distribution. On the editorial side, there are newsletter writers / editors, editors, and writers / reporters. Marketing / communication, audience development / engagement, and social media / content manager are the roles working on distribution.
We can also see that most, but not all, organizations are specific about the job title, opting for “newsletter editor” or “audience development / engagement” rather than the more generic “editor” or “marketing / communication”.
Managers in newsletters
One level higher in the hierarchy the situation is the opposite as revealed by our second survey question “If you work in newsletters, who do you report to?”.
As shown in the chart below, “head or chief of newsletters” are rare at less than 5% of responses, and most newsletter editors report to an editor or editor in chief who has broader editorial responsibility.
While the focus of managers is different, we again see the split between editorial and marketing functions. Some newsletter writers report to an editor or editor in chief while others are part of the marketing side, reporting to the director of marketing / audience. We also see significant number of newsletter writers reporting into a founder / CEO / partner / general manager, likely in smaller organizations.
Newsletter editors are common, newsletter directors rare
So in conclusion, most organizations have hired specific “newsletter editor” but not created “newsletter directors”.
Our reading of the results would be that newsletters have become a vital part of most publishers’ business that requires specialists to write and edit the newsletters.
At the same time, the org charts of publishers differ depending on size, primary business model and content.
The larger publishers with a focus on digital subscriptions are hiring newsletter specialists also at strategic and director levels. For example both the NY Times and the LA Times recently made key hires. We also see directors and executive focused mostly on email at specialists like Axios or Quartz.
But smaller publishers with mixed business models often do not have a team large enough for a dedicated newsletter director and instead have the newsletter editors report to the editor in chief or even the founder.
