The Banner is seeking a Visuals Director to lead our newsroom's visual storytelling across photography, illustration, design, multimedia, and digital presentation across the state.
Reporting to the Banner Manager Editor, this person will manage a team of visual journalists and creative contributors, including staff photographers, designers, illustrators, and freelance talent. The Visuals Director will work closely with editors, reporters, audience, product, digital, and social teams to ensure that our journalism is visually compelling, accurate, accessible, ethical, and optimized across platforms.
The ideal candidate is an experienced creative leader with strong newsroom judgment, a sharp eye for visual narrative, and a deep understanding of how visuals can strengthen journalism. They should be equally comfortable managing daily photo and design workflows, art directing ambitious enterprise projects, mentoring creative staff, and helping define visual standards for a growing digital newsroom.
What You'll Do
- Lead the day-to-day visual journalism workflow for The Banner's newsroom, including photography, illustration, design, multimedia, and freelance visual work.
- Manage, coach, and support staff photographers, designers, illustrators, and other visual contributors.
- Oversee assignment and edit visual work for daily news, breaking news, enterprise stories, investigations, features, service journalism, special projects, and audience-facing platforms.
- Art direct ambitious editorial projects, including photo essays, visual explainers, illustrations, comics, special packages, and multimedia storytelling.
- Collaborate with editors and reporters early in the story-planning process to identify the strongest visual approach for each piece of journalism.
- Develop creative briefs, visual storyboards, shot lists, mood boards, and project plans for major visual work.
- Oversee the commission and direct freelance photographers, illustrators, designers, and other creative contributors.
- Partner with audience, social, digital, and product teams to optimize visuals for article pages, homepage, newsletters, social platforms, mobile experiences, and emerging formats.
- Help set, document, and maintain editorial visual standards across The Banner's journalism.
- Ensure all visual work meets high standards for accuracy, fairness, representation, captioning, crediting, accessibility, and journalistic ethics.
- Manage visual resources, including freelance budgets, assignment planning, deadlines, workflow systems, tools, and production priorities.
- Stay current with visual journalism trends, digital storytelling formats, design tools, audience habits, and platform best practices.
- Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and creative team culture rooted in trust, experimentation, accountability, and constructive feedback.
What You'll Bring:
- At least 7 years of experience in visual journalism, photography, photo editing, design, illustration direction, art direction, multimedia storytelling, or a closely related field.
- Experience managing people, freelancers, projects, creative workflows, or cross-functional editorial work.
- A strong portfolio that demonstrates excellent visual judgment, storytelling range, creative direction, and digital presentation.
- Experience working in or closely with a newsroom, editorial organization, documentary environment, or public-interest storytelling organization.
- An outstanding eye for visual narrative and a demonstrated ability to use photography, illustration, design, and other visual formats to make journalism more compelling and understandable.
- Strong understanding of journalistic ethics, visual accuracy, consent, context, representation, and responsible image use.
- Experience creating or directing visual storyboards, creative briefs, project plans, or visual concepts.
- Familiarity with visual and design tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Figma, Sketch, or similar platforms.
- Comfort working across digital platforms, including websites, mobile experiences, newsletters, social media, and multimedia story formats.
- Strong communication, collaboration, and interpersonal skills.
- Ability to give and receive thoughtful, constructive creative feedback.
- Strong organizational and project management skills, with the ability to balance daily deadlines and long-term priorities.
- Curiosity, sound editorial judgment, attention to detail, and a commitment to continuous learning.
- Willingness to work some evenings, weekends, holidays, or irregular hours as news requires.
- A commitment to The Banner's mission and to upholding the highest standards of independent journalism.
Preferred Experience
- Experience leading visual coverage in a local, regional, or metro newsroom.
- Experience managing photographers, designers, illustrators, photo editors, or visual journalists.
- Experience directing enterprise, investigative, or special-project visual journalism.
- Familiarity with Baltimore, Maryland, and the region's communities, history, culture, and civic life.
- Experience developing visual standards, brand guidance, or digital storytelling systems.
- Experience with accessibility best practices, including alt text, mobile readability, inclusive design, and visual clarity.
- Experience using audience insights or analytics to inform digital presentation while maintaining editorial standards.
What Success Looks Like
The Visuals Director will help The Banner produce visual journalism that is distinctive, ethical, audience-centered, and deeply connected to the communities we serve. Success in this role means:
- Visual planning is integrated earlier and more consistently into newsroom workflows.
- Staff and freelancers have clear direction, strong feedback, and opportunities to grow.
- Major stories and projects have compelling, thoughtful, and well-executed visual approaches.
- The Banner's visual work reflects Baltimore and Maryland communities with accuracy, dignity, nuance, and care.
- Visual standards are clear, consistent, and aligned with The Banner's editorial values.
- Our journalism is stronger, more engaging, and more accessible because of excellent visual storytelling.
Salary Range: $115,000 - $135,000 Individual pay may vary from the target range and is determined by several factors including experience, internal pay equity, and other relevant business considerations. We periodically review all teammates pay to ensure a great compensation package that is fair and equal across the board.
Work Environment
This is a hybrid role based in Baltimore, Maryland. The role requires regular collaboration with newsroom colleagues and may include field assignments, community events, breaking news coverage, and occasional evening, weekend, or holiday work as news dictates.
Our amazing benefits include:
- Flexible Paid Time Off
- Retirement savings - 401K plan offered through Human Interest, with a company match
- Student Loan Debt Repayment Assistance for qualified employees
- Full health benefits - medical, dental, vision, prescription, FSA/HSA., and coverage for family/dependents
- Sick Leave eligible for rollover
- Commuter Benefits
- 11 Paid National Holidays
- Employee Assistance Program
- Generous Parental Leave
- Company paid access to a wellness platform to support mental, financial and physical wellbeing
Our Core Values:
- Do what's right. Honesty, morality, respect and the mission guide our actions and decisions. By doing the right thing, we inspire others to believe.
- Work together. We collaborate to create something special. Together we challenge assumptions, trust each other, take risks, and foster transparent and direct communication.
- Listen to be heard. Our stories are trustworthy. They are inspired by and created for our readers. Their story is our story. Communities are at the center of our journalism, and everything we do.
- Deliver impactful results. Acting as one accountable team and driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, we deliver bold and innovative results. We act fast, execute and learn. We celebrate great outcomes.
- Be inclusive. We celebrate the uniqueness of each individual and act by curating a culture that leverages diverse perspectives as the key to fulfilling our mission. VIFLJ is for all of us.
The Venetoulis Institute embraces diversity and inclusion, and we are wholeheartedly committed to being proactive in inspiring a culture of inclusion across our organization. We are dedicated to establishing an organization that reflects the fundamental respect for different ways of working and living, and we assure every employee the opportunity to reach their full potential.
We are dedicated to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities throughout the recruitment process. If you require accommodation due to a disability to participate in the application process, please contact [email protected] to request accommodation. Reasonable accommodations may include, but are not limited to, adjustments in the application process, modifications or assistance regarding job interviews, and accommodations to enable access to our facilities. We appreciate the value that individuals with disabilities bring to our workforce and encourage applicants with disabilities to disclose their needs for accommodation to facilitate a smooth and inclusive recruitment experience.
