Publisher Success Manager

From growing loyal audiences and launching email newsletters to increasing membership and major gifts, BlueLena provides the strategy, support, and tools that power more than 250 local news publications. Alongside standard development and monetization tools, we’ve built the industry-leading customer experience platform that can nurture a reader from first email signup all the way through to a small recurring donation or a major gift. With a culture of collaboration and continuous innovation, we’re a trusted partner to our publishers, empowering them to deliver essential information in order to inform, engage and serve their communities. 

We’re hiring a Publisher Success Manager to support our growing community of independent journalism organizations! In this role, you’ll work closely with our Director, Publisher Success and Director, Portfolio Growth to support publisher partners within a dedicated portfolio. You’ll focus on implementation, technical coordination, and day-to-day problem-solving, while helping surface emerging needs and strategic considerations as publishers grow their audience and revenue. You’ll also collaborate with our Product, Operations, and Growth teams to ensure publishers receive consistent, high-quality support across their work with BlueLena.

Key Responsibilities:

• Stay conversant in the evolving landscape of independent journalism, reader revenue and media technology, and translate that knowledge into practical, actionable guidance for clients.

• Serve as the alternate client-success contact for a portfolio of publisher partners, working closely with the Director, Publisher Success and Director, Portfolio Growth to build strong working relationships across leadership, editorial, audience and development teams.

• Support onboarding and implementation of BlueLena’s platform and consulting services within the portfolio, with primary responsibility for technical onboarding and issue triage to ensure timely, high-quality outcomes.

• Serve as the first point of contact for technical and implementation-related issues, routing technical matters to BlueLena’s support or platform teams, tracking issues through resolution, and surfacing strategic implications or emerging client needs.

• Monitor and analyze client performance metrics (e.g., subscriber growth, recurring revenue, donor conversions, retention rates) and collaborate with the Director, Publisher Success and Director, Portfolio Growth to surface insights and opportunities for improvement.

• Collaborate with the Director, Publisher Success and Director, Portfolio Growth to support audience development, engagement, fundraising and technology integration suited to news publishers.

• Advocate for best practices internally and externally by contributing to BlueLena’s playbooks, case studies and training efforts.

This is a strong fit for someone with experience in audience, reader revenue, or client-facing work at a newsroom or media consultancy, who enjoys building trusted relationships, supporting publishers through practical, hands-on problem-solving, and is interested in growing toward broader strategic responsibility over time.

This position reports to BlueLena’s Director of Publisher Success.

Preferred Qualifications & Skills:

• 3+ years of experience in client success, account management, or operations-focused roles, preferably in media, publishing, digital audience growth, or fundraising/development.
• Demonstrated experience supporting organizations through complex project management, technical implementation and coordination, and/or execution of audience engagement or revenue initiatives.
• Strong analytical skills; comfort working with data dashboards, creating and tracking KPIs, and translating insights into action.
• Excellent communication skills – both written and verbal – across multiple stakeholders (executives, editors, product teams).
• Project-management mindset with ability to multi-task, prioritize and carry multiple client engagements concurrently.
• Enthusiasm for mission-driven media and independent journalism.

Spanish Fluency:

Preference will be given to candidates who are proficient or fully fluent in Spanish (reading, writing and speaking). This recognizes our growing network of Spanish-language publications as well as bilingual audiences within our broader client community. Spanish fluency will enable you to work effectively with Spanish-speaking clients, understand and respond to Spanish-language market dynamics, and contribute to our commitment to inclusivity and growth in multilingual journalism.

Our ideal candidate:

• You’ve worked in a client-facing, audience, revenue, or operations role at a newsroom or media consultancy, or supported audience or fundraising work for mission-driven organizations.
• You have hands-on experience supporting the execution of audience, revenue, or fundraising initiatives, including managing multiple platforms within a tech stack and troubleshooting implementation issues.
• You understand the independent journalism ecosystem, including nonprofit and mission-driven models, and are familiar with the tools and platforms commonly used by publishers—or can learn new systems quickly.
• You’re comfortable rolling up your sleeves—jumping into systems, collaborating with teammates in Slack, and helping solve day-to-day problems or demonstrating how to complete a task.
• You’re data-aware and practical, able to spot trends, questions, or red flags in metrics and use them to inform next steps.
• You’re organized and reliable, able to manage multiple workstreams, follow through on details, and keep work moving across teams.
• You’re curious, collaborative, and motivated by impact, with an interest in growing your skills and responsibilities over time.

Why join BlueLena?

We’re a small, mission-driven team that supports over 250 newsrooms around the world. Our clients do incredible work, and our job is to give them the infrastructure and strategy they need to thrive. You’ll be joining a collaborative, values-aligned team that’s working hard to build a sustainable future for independent journalism—and having fun while doing it.

Our clients’ jobs are difficult, and our primary goal is making financial sustainability a reality without overly burdening them. The ideal candidate will think beyond the solutions available today, identifying emerging needs within the client base and proposing solutions that we can build and scale across the network.

In addition to these role-specific expectations, our ideal candidate also exhibits the qualities that define our BlueLena team members, including:

• Collaborative: BlueLena is a true learning environment, and despite our org chart, we’re a relatively flat organization. Great ideas and best practices come from team members across the org, and it’s not uncommon for our senior leaders to play a support role when needed. We don’t hoard knowledge, we support each other, and we do whatever we can to back each other up.
• Motivated: You are a detail-oriented project leader with the ability to multi-task and get things done in a fast paced, ever-changing environment.
• Accountable: You are an experienced people leader who represents the organization with integrity and professionalism. You embody standards for personal accountability while maintaining work-life balance.
• Curious: You ask good questions, show empathy, are great at listening and synthesizing large amounts of information.
• Strategic: You are comfortable with identifying and proposing solutions to complex challenges. Although not immersed in daily business operations, you understand them and can identify/recommend opportunities for improvement.

How to apply:

Please submit your resume and a brief cover letter (1-2 pages) that includes:

1. Why you’re interested in this role and in BlueLena’s mission.
2. Your relevant experience supporting publishers, audience growth or fundraising.
3. Confirmation of your Spanish-language fluency (if applicable) and any experience working with Spanish-language audiences or publications.

We look forward to reviewing your application.

Company Benefits

We believe that supporting great work starts with supporting great people. Here’s what you can expect as a full-time team member at BlueLena:

• Health coverage: we offer a company sponsored plan (medical, vision and dental) and contribute up to $500 per month toward health insurance for you and your family. Or you can opt out and receive this as additional taxable income.
• Generous 401k match: we match 100% of your contribution up to 3% of your salary, and 50% of the next 2%.
• Take time when you need it: we provide 20 days of paid leave each year, plus 8 paid company holidays.
• Company laptop: we provide you with a choice of MacBook or equivalent PC and it becomes yours to keep at the end of two years.
• Evolving benefits for a growing team: as we grow, our benefits do too. We’re always working to make BlueLena a great place to build your career and future.

Not you but think you have something to offer? Job descriptions are tough to write and rarely comprehensive. The above is only one way we’ve envisioned this role. We welcome people of all backgrounds and experiences to apply; come with a passion for supporting the independent news ecosystem and an ability to learn and tell us how you think you can make an impact with BlueLena.

To apply, please send a short email to join@bluelena.io outlining how you would make an impact at BlueLena. Include a resume or LinkedIn link. 

About BlueLena:

BlueLena was founded in 2020 by an experienced team of publishers, journalists and news marketing executives to create a sustainable future for independent local media. We do so by deploying world class technology, and delivering the expertise and professional services to support audience growth, build recurring reader revenues and cultivate major donor relationships for long-term publisher success. 

Today we support over 250 newsrooms across North America, Asia and Europe.

The BlueLena publishing membership represents a diverse mix of nonprofit and for-profit newsrooms, including pure digital and hybrid print + digital publications, as well as established and new media brands. Our clients represent membership with the American Journalism Project (AJP), the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN), LION Publishers, the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), the National Association of Hispanic Press (NAHP), the Black Press Association (NNPA), and the Local Media Association (LMA).

We facilitate the sharing of best practices through a weekly newsletter, community Slack channel, and monthly Zoom meetings where we spotlight success stories from across the BlueLena publisher consortium.

BlueLena is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.