The American Press Institute seeks a part-time, client-facing independent contractor to provide customer support to our newsroom partners using API’s products, Metrics for News and Source Matters, for the remainder of 2026, with an option to extend through 2027. Our products help dozens of news organizations strategically use their data to better understand their audiences and reinforce long-term editorial goals beyond reach. Metrics for News is our proprietary analytics tool that helps news organizations understand what, how and why audiences engage with their journalism. Source Matters is a source diversity tracking tool that helps news organizations learn more about the diversity of their sources and where they have opportunities to broaden sourcing in an effort to practice more inclusive journalism.
For this part-time contract position, we are seeking a solution-oriented, user-focused advocate to help our team communicate and triage support across multiple news partners to help improve our news products and customer success. The support specialist will contribute to new partner onboarding to our products, which will require configuring product setup, helping partners follow instructions for setting up RSS feeds, analytics or content categorization rules. At times, the specialist will review data configurations in our product dashboards, including helping partners follow instructions for setting up RSS feeds and CSV files, checking permissions in their analytics services, and understanding how particular technical issues may be related. This position will involve some amount of troubleshooting and gathering additional information from people to clarify the support needs before elevating tickets to other team members. As part of the communication and guidance offered to partner newsrooms, this position will also develop documentation in written, screenshare or video form to support product education and usage. The specialist will also contribute to weekly and occasional on-demand meetings to communicate support needs and solutions.
Core duties will entail:
- Monitoring incoming partner support needs and keeping track of new and old support tickets to ensure our team continues to respond to partners effectively.
- Monitoring for data delays or system issues that may impact partner dashboards.
- Establishing a workflow for assisting partner newsrooms with their support needs.
- Assisting news organizations with onboarding and technical support, such as linking them to specific technical instructions or guides and walking them through product configuration steps.
- Setting up topic and content categorization rules so partners can track success of their journalism. Basic knowledge of HTML is helpful here.
- Advising partner newsrooms on product requirements and recommendations for their account and understanding how they may not be meeting certain criteria.
- Documenting notes and lessons learned about your experiences with our products and partners to ensure the entire team is aware of the successes, challenges, and opportunities you’re observing.
- Attending weekly meetings with the product team to communicate support needs and partner priorities.
Experience requirements:
- Excellent organizational and communication skills
- Excellent time-management skills
- Ability to work collaboratively with team members and many external partners
- Ability to work on Eastern Standard Time (EST) hours
Preferred experience:
- Familiar with Hubspot’s Ticketing and Inbox services, or similar CRMs
- Familiar with modern data analytics services, such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.
- Experience working with dashboards or databases that analyze metrics.
- General knowledge of HTML markup, CSV files, and RSS feeds.
- Experience with audience engagement
- Experience with project and/or community management
- Experience with training or coaching directly or preparing educational materials
- Familiarity with the news business and current issues affecting the news industry
This is a part-time, independent contractor, remote within Eastern and Central time zones within the United States with responsibilities that will vary over a five-month span and may be eligible for renewal as API needs permit. The consultant may work up to 20 hours per week with an assigned group of news organizations at a range of $45-$55/hour depending on experience. The Product Strategy team works remotely in the United States across Eastern and Central time zones.
How to apply:
To apply for this position, please send a resume highlighting your support experience with a paragraph or two on your interest working with local newsrooms to liz.worthington@pressinstitute.org and yoni.greenbaum@pressinstitute.org with the subject line API Product Support Specialist. This position will remain open until it is filled.
About us:
Metrics for News is an application that helps newsrooms contextualize their web analytics for journalism. Our team works with newsrooms across the country to help them understand how particular audiences engage with their content and how to make better content strategy decisions based on the information pulled out of Metrics for News.
Source Matters is an application that helps newsrooms conduct an automated, customizable source audit to better understand the diversity of sources quoted in their coverage.
American Press Institute is a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Va., that leads and inspires innovation in the news industry. Foremost, we help local news publishers grow and sustain their businesses by better focusing on the audiences’ needs and behaviors.
