Vice Life Senior Editor | NYC
ABOUT THIS ROLE
Senior Editor, Life
ABOUT VICE MEDIA GROUP
VICE Media Group is the world’s largest independent youth media company. Launched in 1994, VICE has offices in 35 cities across the globe with a focus on five key businesses: VICE.com, an award-winning international network of digital content; VICE STUDIOS, a feature film and television production studio; VICE, an Emmy-winning international television network; a Peabody award-winning NEWS division with the most Emmy-awarded nightly news broadcast; and VIRTUE, a global, full-service creative agency with 21 offices around the world. VICE's content has been recognized by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Peabodys, Golden Globes, Sundance Film Festival, George Polk, Scripps Howard, PEN Center, Cannes Lions, Knight Foundation, American Society of Magazine Editors, LA Press Club, James Beard and Webbys, among others. VICE Media Group’s portfolio includes Refinery29, the leading global media and entertainment company focused on women; PULSE Films, a London-based next-generation production studio with outposts in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Berlin; i-D, a global digital and bimonthly magazine defining fashion and contemporary culture; and Garage, a digital platform and biannual publication converging the worlds of art and design
VICE x Team
The Life desk within VICE Editorial is seeking a Senior Editor to help lead its health and reporting-oriented coverage, specifically on beats related to wellness, medical health, cultural health, fitness, diet, and nutrition. The Life desk as a whole is reponsible for covering health, wellness, fitness, sex, relationships, drugs, alcohol, and personal finance, with an emphasis on personalized/individualized angles. Our coverage consists of reported journalism, reported essays, personal essays, service pieces, and short-form coverage. We aim to speak truth to power and provide service and insight to our readers. The Vice Life desk delights in antagonizing and questioning the systemic forces that make us live life the way we do, and is unafraid to ask how things might be better for everyone. We work closely together every day to produce pieces with strong voices, strong points of view, and genuinely helpful insight and information to our readership.
Role x You
We're looking for a seasoned, skeptical journalist who can guide our readers through the ever-growing morasse of health and wellness hype with determined reporting, sometimes with a focus on solution-oriented stories. This means taking a critical look at the industry's latest trends, and speaking to the people whose experiences can inspire and inform.
The Senior Editor will be primarily responsible for working with their robust network of freelancers to produce several reporting-driven pieces of varying lengths per week on the topics named above. This editor will also be responsible for helping shape staff coverage of this subject matter, editing pieces as well as refining pitches and helping direct writers’ efforts in the reporting process. There will be opportunities to work on longer-form pieces, but successful candidates will thrive on being responsive to the news cycle as well as sniffing out original reporting opportunities that are not being leveraged by other publications. They will love collaborating with our team to create the best packaging for our stories and extend their influence across our social, video, and TV platforms.
Please note: A separate desk from the Life desk within VICE Editorial, News and Issues, handles politics-driven and business-driven coverage of institutional health policy, reproductive rights; candidates desiring more clarity on this division would do well to review the Life desks’s pitch guidelines.
Qualifications
You have these:
3+ years as a science or health writer/reporter in a high-metabolism newsroom/blogging environment, with a history of creating fast-turn short pieces as well as in-depth, conversation-starting reporting
An extremely clear idea of the beats and narratives you’d love to cover within the health/wellness/medical/fitness/nutrition field
An excess of great ideas based on your instincts for ferreting out stories no one is telling that are ready to be farmed out to your diverse network of freelancers
A strong bullshit detector and strong sense of quality reporting and writing, especially when it comes to science and medicine
We’d love if you also had these:
An aversion to cliches and boring writing
A diverse network of sources that can be leveraged across freelance and staff work
We want to find people who believe in our goals and feel inspired enough to grow while they’re here to fill the role, rather than someone who checks the boxes but isn’t invested. We encourage you to apply and show us what you’ve got.
Qualified candidates must be able to perform the essential functions of this position satisfactorily, with or without reasonable accommodation. The requirements and essential functions described above are not an exhaustive list and instead are meant to describe the general nature and level of work required of the job. VICE reserves the right to modify the essential functions of this position where a legitimate business exists.
If you require reasonable accommodation during the application and selection process, please let us know. We will work together to best meet your needs.
Working at VICE
VICE offers comprehensive benefits and compensation package that is commensurate with experience and abilities. VICE editorial staff is represented by the Writer’s Guild of America East, a labor union representing writers in motion pictures, television, cable, digital media and broadcast news. To learn more read the VICE Guide to VICE
Additional VICE benefits include but are not limited to trans-inclusive benefits, fertility benefits, and tuition reimbursement. We also have dog-friendly days, bagel Fridays, and the occasional drag show in our conveniently located Williamsburg office. Day-to-day you can enjoy a rooftop garden full of edible produce (in the summer), beverages, healthy snacks and the opportunity to make the work of a lifetime if you’re into that sort of thing, which we hope you are.
VICE prioritizes the ideas and people that other media companies miss. We believe that innovation is a direct result of diverse, inclusive cultures so we don’t just “tolerate” differences, we celebrate it and see it as essential to our staff, culture, and business.
Equal Employment Opportunities: VICE is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that strives to create and maintain a workplace that celebrates inclusion and diversity. At VICE, we understand that inclusion and diversity are major benefits to our employees, our readers and viewers, and our company culture. We treat all applicants and employees fairly without regard to age, alienage or citizenship status, color, disability, gender, gender identity and expression, marital status and partnership status, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion/creed, sexual orientation, arrest or conviction record, caregiver status, credit history, unemployment status, salary history, status as a victim of domestic violence, stalking and sex offenses, status as a veteran or active military service member, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
VICE requires that all employees have proper authorization to work in the U.S. Should an applicant require employment sponsorship, VICE will determine, in its sole discretion, whether such sponsorship will be provided.
Qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered for employment in a manner consistent with the New York City Fair Chance Act or other applicable laws.
VICE Media Group is not partnering with agencies nor accepts unsolicited resumes and will not responsible for any fees or expenses related to such unsolicited resumes and/or applicants.