Partnerships Manager / Director

Position description

We’re hiring a Partnerships Manager/Director to forge strategic relationships with leading newsrooms, build a community of expert journalists, and help scale our impact across all Tarbell programs. You’ll secure placements at top-tier media outlets, identify promising journalists for our initiatives, and elevate Tarbell’s presence within the journalism ecosystem.

About the Tarbell Center

The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism supports journalism that helps society navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI. By 2029, we aim to support 10,000 high-quality stories on AI and scale to an organisation of similar size and prestige to the Pulitzer Center.

 

Our programs include:

• Tarbell Fellowship: Our flagship program provides early career journalists with training, a stipend of $50,000-$70,000, and a 9-month placement at a major newsroom. 2025 placements include Bloomberg, MIT Tech Review, The Verge, The Information, TIME, LA Times, South China Morning Post, and many others.

• Journalists-in-residence: We provide senior writers with funding to pursue longer investigations, explore entrepreneurial projects, and educate themselves on artificial intelligence.

• Tarbell Grants: We provide awards of $1k-$15k for impactful reporting on artificial intelligence and its impacts. We’ve funded journalists writing for WIRED, The New Yorker, and other top outlets.

About the role

As Partnerships Manager/Director, your mission is to build and maintain the relationships crucial to Tarbell’s success across all our programs. You’ll be the face of Tarbell within the journalism community, forging strategic alliances that advance our mission of supporting high-quality AI journalism.

 

In this role you’ll:

• Forge partnerships with top-tier newsrooms. Current placement organizations include Bloomberg, MIT Tech Review, and South China Morning Post. You’ll seek to add 5+ top newsrooms to this list in 2025-2026, e.g. Financial Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

• Build relationships with individual journalists to identify promising candidates for our fellowship, residency programs, and grants. You’ll help create a vibrant community of journalists covering AI and support their development.

• Collaborate on institutional grantmaking initiatives, helping to design and secure strategic partnerships for large-scale journalism projects (e.g., funding an investigative team covering AI lobbying in DC, creating a dedicated “Frontier AI” vertical at a major publication).

• Elevate Tarbell’s visibility and reputation within the journalism ecosystem through strategic initiatives, representation at industry conferences, and targeted outreach campaigns.

Responsibilities

You’ll own partnerships across Tarbell’s programs and be responsible for building and maintaining these critical relationships.

 

Ranked by impact on the overall mission, this might include:

• Strategic partnerships with newsrooms (40%): You’ll be the main point of contact with editors at our current partner organizations and forge new partnerships for 2026 and beyond. This includes identifying potential host organizations, pitching the value of our programs, and negotiating partnership terms.

• Building relationships with journalists (25%): You’ll develop strategies to identify and engage with promising journalists at all career stages. This includes representing Tarbell at journalism events, conducting outreach to potential candidates, and maintaining an active network in the AI journalism community.

• Cross-program collaboration (20%): You’ll work closely with our Executive Director, Fellowship Manager, Grants Lead, and other team members to ensure that partnerships align with and advance Tarbell’s overall strategy. You’ll help match fellows with appropriate placements and identify potential grant recipients.

• Institutional grantmaking development (10%): You’ll collaborate with the leadership team to develop our institutional grantmaking initiative, identifying strategic opportunities to fund major AI journalism projects at established outlets.

• Strategic communications (5%): You’ll contribute to Tarbell’s external communications strategy, helping articulate our value proposition to potential partners and raising our profile within the journalism community.

Qualifications

We’re looking for someone with strong journalism industry connections and a talent for relationship building. Prior experience in media partnerships, newsroom management, or journalism is essential.

 

You might be a particularly good fit for this role if you are:

• Deeply connected in journalism circles. We are looking for someone with 5+ years of experience in journalism, media partnerships, or a related field, with established relationships at major news outlets.

• An excellent relationship builder. You have a proven track record of building and maintaining professional relationships, with strong interpersonal skills and the ability to connect authentically with a wide range of stakeholders.

• A compelling communicator. You can articulate complex ideas clearly and persuasively, both in writing and verbally. You’re adept at pitching partnerships and communicating Tarbell’s unique value proposition.

• Familiar with AI and technology reporting. You understand the current landscape of AI journalism and can identify gaps and opportunities. While deep technical knowledge isn’t required, you should be able to engage meaningfully in conversations about AI reporting.

• Organized and competent at project management. You can manage multiple partnerships simultaneously, keeping track of details and ensuring commitments are met on time.

• Driven to further Tarbell’s mission of supporting journalism that helps society navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI.

 

Bonus points for:

• Experience with grant writing or fundraising, particularly in journalism contexts.

• A strong understanding of advanced AI, or the ability to learn this quickly.

• Leadership ability, including a track record of effective people management and leading high-performance teams.

We encourage speculative applications; we expect many strong candidates will not meet all of the criteria listed here.

Location

Our team is international and we’re open to candidates in London, San Francisco, New York, or Washington DC.

 

We have a particular preference for candidates based in London or San Francisco, or willing to relocate. We can sponsor UK work authorization for eligible candidates and London-based staff will be expect to work from our East London office 3 days per week. Unfortunately, we are not yet in a position to provide US work permits.

 

We require all staff to spend 1 week every quarter on site, typically in London or San Francisco. Additionally, occasional travel may be required (approximately 1 week per quarter).

Benefits

Our benefits include:

• 33 days of paid holiday in total (including national holidays)

• $4,500 annual budget for equipment and office space.

• $5,000 annual budget for personal development and productivity.

• Standard pension, with 3% contribution from employer. 

• Flexible work schedule & location (when and where you work is mostly up to you). 

• A supportive work environment to grow and do your best work

Tarbell is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. The emergence of increasingly advanced AI poses a risk to everyone. Grappling with this technology will require the participation of all of society and is undermined by discriminatory hiring practices which pit factions of humanity against one another.

We do not discriminate against qualified employees or applicants based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, sexual preference, marital status, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law or local ordinance.

Application instructions

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