Commissioning Editor, Environment

The Conversation's UK edition is looking for a commissioning editor to join its environment desk. This is an exciting opportunity to source, commission and edit content for a general audience driven by university research. You’ll be working with a dynamic team of fantastic journalists and some of the world’s leading academic experts.

Every day, The Conversation publishes articles written by experts from universities across the UK and Europe that explain and analyse the latest news, trends and research. Our articles are written for a non-expert audience with the aim of providing our millions of readers around the world with evidence-based information that can help them make better informed decisions.

The environment desk currently covers a broad range of topics. These include climate policy, the effects of the climate crisis on seasonal wildlife, ways to tackle toxic pollution, the politics of the energy transition, the psychology of environmental action, ocean health, climate finance and ways to live more sustainably. All of our coverage is underpinned by academic research.

Who We’re Looking For

We’re looking for a forward-looking editor with an excellent eye for detail. 

You’ll be full of creative ideas about how to generate research-driven and highly engaging stories that add value to the news cycle. You’ll be adept at crafting compelling stories by translating complex and complicated ideas into accessible language for a non-expert audience under the high pressure of a daily deadline.

Ideally, you will have a proven track record of producing rigorously researched climate content that crosses into all corners of the newsroom (with a health or culture angle, for example). 

You will be an enthusiastic self-starter, self motivated, punctual and extremely organised. You’ll thrive on being busy, multi-tasking and working efficiently at speed without supervision. 

You’ll have excellent people skills and enjoy working closely with some colleagues on a remote basis and with academic authors who have varying levels of experience writing for the public. The process of editing an academic’s draft is collaborative and our editors play a key role in nurturing researchers’ talent and building their confidence in communicating beyond the silo of scientific research. 

On a day-to-day basis, the role will involve planning coverage, developing ideas, identifying academics to commission and working with authors on their stories. 

You’ll have experience growing digital audiences and reader engagement and bring innovative ideas for measuring our impact beyond the readership analytics. 

You may have some experience of creating snappy social media posts, vertical video or YouTube videos about topical environment stories and be keen to develop relationships with other outlets keen to republish our stories under a Creative Commons licence. 

You’ll be expected to deliver training sessions to academics. Some of these will be in person, some online. Occasionally, you may be required to travel to attend events on behalf of The Conversation. 

How We Work

Our HQ is in London but you don’t have to be as we work largely remotely. Staff within the M25 are asked to come into the office at least twice a week, and for those who live further away it’s several times a year for all-staff meetings, plus six-weekly environment team meet-ups. 

We value diversity of all kinds and are keen to receive applications from people from under-represented backgrounds.

Applicants should supply a CV and a cover letter providing evidence for as many of the abilities described above as possible (although you don’t need to tick every box to apply), including suggestions for five articles that you could commission for our environment section. 

Please send your CV, cover letter and five article suggestions to [email protected]

About the company

Launched in 2011, The Conversation (https://theconversation.com) is a news and expert analysis website written by academic experts working with professional journalists who ensure their expertise can be read and understood by as wide an audience as possible. Built around a not-for-profit model funded by universities, The Conversation is ad-free, free-to-read and available under Creative Commons for others to republish. Our audience is very international, with around 10 million pageviews a month of which around 80% are outside the UK and Ireland. The UK/Ireland edition is one of ten editions of The Conversation worldwide, publishing in six languages, which together generate around 47 million pageviews a month.