Mill Media is looking for a Senior Editor to join and help to lead one of the most exciting and innovative teams in British journalism. We need an exceptional editorial leader who knows how to get the best out of journalists, works extremely well with copy and will flourish within our ambitious environment. 

Role Details

• Location: Must live in one of the cities we cover (Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, London, Sheffield, Liverpool or Leeds) or be willing to relocate.
• Salary: Dependent on experience (circa. £40k-50k, to increase next year) and the possibility of share options in the future. 
• Basis: Full-time (including some out-of-hours work).
• Office/remote: Four days a week in the office; working remotely on Wednesdays.
• Start date: August/September 2026.
• Deadline: Sunday 5 July 2026. Scroll down for details on how to apply.

About Us

Since being founded in June 2020, Mill Media has become a key player in UK media, publishing high-quality, deeply reported local news across seven cities. The company has been described as “one of the most interesting and impressive media startups of the last decade” by the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch, and as “very, very impressive” by the Wall Street Journal’s editor Emma Tucker.

Our financial backers include Sir Mark Thompson, the chief executive of CNN and former boss of the New York Times and BBC, who invested because of the “exceptional quality” of our work. In the past year, our stories have led to political resignations, questions in parliament, and have prompted a police investigation into fraud at a university. We were a finalist for Private Eye’s Paul Foot Award in 2025 and 2026, and won the local journalism award at the British Journalism Awards last year. The Observer wrote that we are “shaking up local news.”

In recent months, we’ve published agenda-setting stories about Andy Burnham and the IRA bombing of Manchester, plus widely-shared longform features and big political scoops.

What We’re Looking For

This is a role for a proven editorial leader who wants to produce some of the most interesting and agenda-setting journalism in this country. We need someone who can work on complex stories, inject enthusiasm and urgency into a team, develop writers and help to oversee and feed into the strategy of a fast-growing company. 

You will be responsible for running one Mill Media team, which will involve direct management of those staff members. You will also have a wider set of responsibilities within the company, including supporting other teams, editing major stories, developing editorial systems, feeding into our strategy and pushing all of our teams to maintain standards and hit deadlines.

We’re looking for an editor who can edit and commission in the Mill Media style. We commission stories rich with human characters and narrative – the kind of features that read like a novel but are grounded in watertight factual reporting. You will have a natural instinct for identifying these narratives and a brilliant commissioning eye, knowing how to deploy our staff writers and how to hunt down and brief freelance writers across the country to deliver them.

We need someone who is going to fit Mill Media’s distinctive editorial environment, which is known for producing some of the country’s most exciting reporters and writers. That means you need to relish learning from our other senior editors about the Mill Media style of journalism and engagement with readers, and be incredibly proactive about teaching that to the writers you work with.

Key Responsibilities

• Brilliant commissioning: Generating and shaping a constant stream of narrative-driven story ideas that capture the life of our cities. Commissioning both staff writers and freelancers with clarity and precision.
• Driving the newsroom: Injecting urgency and energy into our titles, pushing local editors and reporters to break major stories, follow up aggressively on leads and out-report the competition. 
• Superb story editing: Doing multiple edits each day, and editing in a really hands-on style in which you are aiming to turn a story from good to amazing, from long form essays to quick reactive pieces.
• Management and talent development: Mentoring and managing a diverse team of journalists — fostering a culture of accountability, intense personal growth and high ambition. 
• Systems and strategic growth: Being a key voice in our strategy and figuring out which systems and processes we need to change in order to get better as a company.

Working pattern: This is a full-time role and you need to live in one of our seven cities to do it. You will work four days a week from one of our offices, with Wednesdays as a company-wide remote working day. And you will make regular visits to our HQ in Manchester, if you’re not already Manchester-based.

Attributes Required

• A great ideas brain: An endless supply of creative, narrative-focused story angles. You know how to turn a dry piece of data, a local rumour, or a political shift into a gripping drama that readers will talk about for days.
• Natural management: The initiative to check in with your journalists all the time, keep them excited about their projects and solve the problems in stories.
• Editing skill: A track record of editing complex, high-stakes journalism. You can spot the missing question in an interview, restructure a 3,000-word draft for maximum tension and distill intricate public policy into crystal-clear, jargon-free copy.
• Rigorous judgment: A clear understanding of media law, ethics, and verification. You are a steady hand who can guide reporters through sensitive investigations and protect the integrity of the brand.
• Mission alignment: A deep belief in the value of public-interest local journalism and the Mill Media approach. You are energised by the challenge of building an independent, member-supported alternative to the click-driven media landscape.

How to Apply

To apply for this role, email hiring@millmediaco.uk by Sunday 5 July 2026 at the latest, with a short explanation (in the body of the email) about why you want to join Mill Media and how your experience makes you a great fit for this role.

Please also include:

• A copy of your CV or link to your LinkedIn profile.
• A couple of examples of stories you have edited or overseen and how you shaped them.
• An idea for a Mill Media story that you think we should publish on one of our titles.

If you have any questions, just get in touch via the same email.