Journalism Program Manager
**This is a fully remote position**
The Basics:
The Journalism Program Manager will be responsible for all staff, volunteers, and students involved with the journalism class. In addition to their managerial duties, they will also serve as a classroom teacher. This position is currently a volunteer position, but may become paid depending on performance and funding.
Responsibilities:
- Revising the curriculum and structure of the course for the new semester, coordinating with the Managing Director and other PA staff as necessary
- Recruiting one other volunteer teacher (unpaid staff) and ten volunteer mentor
- Training all teachers and mentors
- Planning and implementing the student recruitment and application process
- Organizing course logistics (group meeting times, technology used, etc)
- Administering, collecting, and analyzing student, staff, and volunteer assessments at the beginning and end of the semester
- Overseeing the process of pitching student stories to news outlets, using personal and professional connections where appropriate
- Updating the class blog with student stories
- Providing program updates as necessary to the Paper Airplanes’ PR and Fundraising teams
- Attending two monthly meetings with PA staff
- Organizing regular team meetings (with the two other teachers) -- at least twice a month
- Organizing 2-3 mentor meetings per semester
- Optional: Securing a new/updated endorsement of the revised curriculum from a J school or established journalism foundation
- Optional: Exploring fundraising opportunities
What we’re looking for:
- Passionate journalist with 2+ years of professional experience (internships will be considered on a case-by-case basis)
- Reporters of all backgrounds are welcome to apply (you do not need to cover international affairs or human rights, etc)
- Fluency in Arabic or experience reporting on the ground in the MENA region/covering refugee issues is not required, but is appreciated
Approximate Time Commitment:
1.5 hours of teaching per week
2 hour of class prep per week
2 hours of feedback/editing student stories per week (but not until later in the semester)
3 hours helping students and their mentors pitch stories (but not until later in the semester)
4 hours of miscellaneous work per week (managing mentors, communicating with PA staff, programmatic work, etc.)
= approximately 12.5 hours per week, up to 15 hours per week
Applications are received from students located across various time zones, meaning class meeting times will not be decided until after the final ten students have been chosen. Consequently, program managers must have MULTIPLE blocks of time available for class meetings once the semester begins.
Timeline:
- This is a year-long position.
- The intro to journalism class runs for 12 weeks. Its new semester will begin September 29th and run until December 21st.
- The program manager will need at least three months to adequately prepare for the upcoming semester (including recruiting and screening volunteers).