Director, Standards and Quality for Yahoo News

Yahoo serves as a trusted guide for hundreds of millions of people globally, helping them achieve their goals online through our portfolio of iconic products. For advertisers, Yahoo Advertising offers omnichannel solutions and powerful data to engage with our brands and deliver results.

A little about us

Yahoo is a global media and tech company that connects people to their passions. We reach nearly 900 million people around the world, bringing them closer to what they love — from finance and sports, to shopping, gaming and news — with the trusted products, content and tech that fuel their day. For partners, we provide a full-stack platform for businesses to amplify growth and drive more meaningful connections across advertising, search and media.

At Yahoo News, we are laser-focused on becoming the world’s best curator for our 35 million daily users and expanding our distribution to meet millions more users where they are through delightful discovery and quality content. Building the best guide to the internet (and the world) requires building the best team.

A lot about you: 

As the Director of Standards and Quality for Yahoo News, you will play a vital role in defining and upholding standards across all Yahoo News content, which includes overseeing standards and ethics for both first-party journalism produced by our global newsrooms and third-party content from publishers and creators. You will lead the copy desk and partner with curation, ensuring that all content types align with our established standards. Working closely with the Yahoo for Publishers and Yahoo for Creator teams, you will develop and implement processes to maintain the highest quality of journalism.

Key Responsibilities:

• Establish Standards for Quality: Refine and implement comprehensive quality and transparency standards for all content on Yahoo News, including articles, videos, display copy on platforms, and user-generated content. This includes ownership of Yahoo News’ style guide and best practices for handling sensitive copy.
• Copy Desk Management: Oversee copy editors, ensuring accurate and consistent editing, fact-checking, sensitivity reads, and adherence to style guidelines across content types and platforms, including newsletters and social media.
• Collaboration with Yahoo for Publishers and Yahoo for Creator teams: Partner with these teams to conceive of and implement processes that ensure content from external sources meets Yahoo News' quality standards.
• Ethical Guidelines: Develop guidelines and conduct ethics training for the newsroom on ethical reporting, covering sensitive topics, and handling controversial news events with integrity.
• Guidance around Key News Events: Provide guidance to the newsroom on how to cover and curate around significant news events, ensuring balanced and comprehensive reporting.
• Collaboration with Research and Product Teams: Work closely with research and product teams to develop signals and indicators for assessing content quality, including the avoidance of bias and ensuring a complete representation of news stories.
• Ethical use of AI: Collaborate with the machine learning team to ensure that content recommendations are unbiased and provide a comprehensive view of the news landscape. Ensure use of AI maintains quality standards and help develop user messaging around AI-written content or features.
• Leadership and Team Management: Lead the copy desk and standards team, providing guidance, mentorship, and vision to maintain and improve quality across Yahoo News.

Qualifications:

• Extensive background in journalism, with a strong understanding of journalistic ethics, standards, and best practices.

• Experience working in complex news environments with a demonstrated ability to handle thorny ethical issues sensitively and effectively.

• Proven leadership experience, including managing teams and leading initiatives in a fast-changing organization.

• Excellent communication skills to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams, including editorial, product, research, and machine learning.

• Strong attention to detail and the ability to maintain high standards of quality across different content types.

• Familiarity with digital publishing platforms, content management systems, and emerging trends in news and media.

• Ability to adapt to evolving industry standards and technologies.

If you are passionate about maintaining the highest standards of quality and ethics in journalism, and you thrive in a dynamic and challenging news environment, we invite you to apply.

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will