Job Opening: Managing Editor

Do you believe journalism has a crucial role to play in healing and transforming the world? Are you a skilled editor who can move effortlessly from reshaping a news story on the struggle for a living wage to editing a scholarly essay on feminist theology? Tikkun magazine is looking for a full-time managing editor to produce its award-winning print magazine and manage its lively online content.

This is the perfect job for someone with top-notch editing skills, intellectual sophistication, a strong affinity for the worldview andcore vision of Tikkun magazine, a strong affinity for and knowledge about Judaism and other religious or spiritual traditions and practices, and a passionate desire to heal and transform the world. This job is at our office in the San Francisco Bay Area (in Berkeley), one of the most exciting and beautiful places to live in the United States.

To flourish here, you must be at once a big-picture person and a details person, a news maven and a media activist, a hard-nosed diplomat and an empathetic mentor. In this role you are responsible for producing all of Tikkun’s editorial content from start to finish, from the initial story idea brainstorm to the meticulous proofing of the final layout. You work under the supervision of Tikkun’s founder, Rabbi Michael Lerner, coordinate closely with Duke University Press (Tikkun’s publisher), and manage multiple volunteers, but most of your own work is self-directed. Our staff is tiny, so the managing editor also serves as commissioning editor, developmental editor, copy-editor, web editor, art director, volunteer coordinator, and social media director.

Does this sound exhilarating to you? Do you have the energy, high-level organizational skills, and stellar efficiency necessary to manage this many projects and timelines at once, without missing a deadline? And are you passionately interested in contemporary activist struggles, progressive interfaith organizing, justice and trauma in Israel/Palestine, social theory, and liberatory forms of spirituality? If so, we can’t wait to hear from you!

Qualifications:

• Experience as an editor in the publication or journalism industries.
• A clear understanding of the progressive and spiritual journalism space that Tikkun inhabits.
• Excellent developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, proofing, research, fact-checking, and writing skills.
• A creative visual imagination and sensitivity to the implications of image choices.
• Ability to comprehend scholarly pieces of social theory and theology and to self-educate as necessary.
• Ability to recruit, train, and closely manage a constantly shifting group of volunteers.
• Ability to triage and prioritize efficiently without becoming overwhelmed.
• Superb organizational skills: without the savvy use of spreadsheets, timelines, calendar alerts, checklists, and file management systems, it is not possible to keep up with this job.
• Tact and non-reactivity in conflict situations, and the ability to choose your battles.
• Facility with Word, Photoshop, WordPress, and Adobe Acrobat.
• Ability to face HTML without getting scared (no original coding required).
• Familiarity with InDesign and with email blast systems like DemocracyInAction or Mailchimp is a plus.

Compensation:

This is a full-time position with a salary of $40,000 to $47,000 in the first year, depending on experience. Staff atTikkun receive excellent health and dental benefits and a generous number of paid vacation days and floating holidays.

How to Apply:

Please send your resume, cover letter, and two published writing samples as attachments to jobs.tikkun@gmail.com. In your cover letter, please explain why you are a good fit for this particular job and why you are drawn to the particular worldview and values of Tikkun. If we are interested in your application, we will contact you. No phone calls or drop-ins, please.

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Tikkun is an award-winning quarterly magazine focused on politics, spirituality, and culture. Most recently it received the “Magazine of the Year: Overall Excellence in Religion Coverage” award from the Religion Newswriters Association in 2014 and an Utne Independent Press Award for “Best Body/Spirit Coverage” in 2011. Associated with the magazine is our membership organization, the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Named after the Jewish concept of mending and transforming a fragmented world, Tikkun offers analysis and commentary that strive to bridge the cultural divide between religious and secular progressives. By bringing together voices from many disparate religious and secular humanist communities to talk about social transformation, political change, and the evolution of our religious traditions, Tikkun creates space for the emergence of a Religious Left to respond to the influence of the Religious Right and the damaging effects of global capitalism, while simultaneously critiquing the narrowly framed economistic, religiophobic, and reductionist views that sometimes prevail in liberal and progressive circles.

The magazine, which began as a progressive Jewish publication thirty years ago, is now interfaith and provides intellectually rigorous, psychologically sophisticated, and unconventional critiques of politics, spirituality, social theory, and culture. Tikkun, which is published by Duke University Press, is especially known for its coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict, social justice issues, and the environment. To learn more, visit tikkun.org.

Tikkun’s head editor and executive director, Rabbi Michael Lerner, leads Beyt Tikkun, a Jewish Renewal synagogue in the San Francisco Bay area, and is a co-founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Our staff includes people of diverse religious backgrounds, along with agnostics and secular humanists.