Hybrid News Editor

at Sunwater Capital

• Job title: News Editor
• Job type: Part Time
• Experience level: Junior, Mid level
• Salary: $35 - $60 per hour
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, North Bethesda, United States

About the role

• News Editor curating, editing, and contextualizing political content for Legis1's legislative intelligence platform. Focus on producing accurate content under tight deadlines in a collaborative environment.

Responsibilities

• Edit including breaking news, live blogs, enterprise pieces, newsletters, and long-form analyses.
• Maintain and enforce style, tone, length, accuracy, grammar, and legal/policy precision across all outputs; ensure alignment with project specifications and client expectations.
• Apply platform-specific formatting and quality standards, ensuring consistency across tiers of publication (short briefs to in-depth deep dives).
• Optimize content for searchability and digital discoverability; assist with headlines, decks, photo captions, and multimedia alignment in collaboration with multimedia editors.
• Vet political and policy details for accuracy; verify dates, votes, bill numbers, committee actions, and regulatory references; flag ambiguities and coordinate with subject matter experts as needed.
• Work with the audience/strategy team to implement policy-focused audience engagement best practices.
• Manage timely delivery of publications within budget and schedule constraints; adapt to shifting priorities and urgent deadline needs.
• Stay current on developments in government, policy, elections, and regulatory issues; translate complex policy topics into accessible, policy-aware editorial content.
• Perform additional duties as assigned, including rapid-turnaround edits for live-events, hearings, or breaking industry news and refine a broad range of political and policy content for multiple digital platforms.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in English, Journalism, Political Science, Public Policy, or a related field.
• Minimum of two years of professional editing/editing-management experience, preferably in newsrooms, policy outlets, think tanks, government communications, or lobbying firms.
• Strong policy knowledge across government, legislation, regulatory issues, and political processes; demonstrated ability to interpret and explain complex policy topics clearly.
• Editorial excellence with proven ability to edit for style, tone, length, grammar, punctuation, and factual accuracy under tight deadlines.
• Experience with digital publishing workflows and content management systems; familiarity with text management and desktop publishing tools.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, Adobe Acrobat, and related productivity software.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; highly organized with strong attention to detail.
• Self-motivated, results-oriented, and capable of contributing effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
• Prefer candidate with a demonstrated newsroom pedigree or policy-focused editorial background, including experience with politics, policy, lobbying, or advocacy content.