You’ve read the headlines. Condé Nast cutting staff. Sports Illustrated gutted (but now, potentially recovering?). Local newspapers folding across the country. If you’re a writer, editor, or content professional navigating a tough market, it’s easy to look at the media industry news and feel like the floor is falling out.
It isn’t. The floor is just moving.
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While traditional media companies have been shedding editorial headcount, something that doesn’t generate quite as many headlines has been happening on the other side of the market: corporate America has been on a content hiring spree. The skills that used to live almost exclusively in newsrooms and magazine offices have become essential comms and marketing infrastructure everywhere else.
Tech companies. Healthcare systems. Universities. Financial institutions. Government nonprofits. They all need people who can tell stories, organize information, and communicate clearly. And right now, they’re paying well for it.
Tech companies are even going so far as to buy entire media outlets at increasing rates, due to their need for distribution and reach in an (almost) zero-click world.
The Companies Hiring for Content Right Now
A scan of active content job listings across Google Jobs turns up a striking range of employers. PepsiCo is hiring a Content Strategist for global corporate communications in New York. Accenture posted a Content Strategist role specifically for “Agentic Commerce” in Chicago. Schneider Electric needs a Content Strategist in Andover, Massachusetts. TD SYNNEX is hiring one in Greenville, South Carolina.
These are not media companies. They are a beverage conglomerate, a management consulting firm, an energy management multinational, and a global IT distributor. All of them have decided that content strategy is a core function, not a nice-to-have.
And notice, these roles are typically terming it “content,” which is almost considered a pejorative term in editorial and journalistic cirlces. It’s important to recognize this movement and adjust your job search accordingly.
The pay reflects strong demand, no matter the doomer headlines. Google is offering between $141,000 and $204,000 for a 12-month Content Strategist contract in Boulder. A Director of Content Strategy at telehealth startup OrderlyMeds is listed at $145,000 to $190,000. Method, a fintech company in San Francisco, is hiring a Storyteller at $160,000 to $200,000.
Those are tech and corporate pay scales, applied to content skills, which we’re sure a lot of marketers and writers will welcome.
The “Storyteller” Title Is Having a Moment
One of the more telling signals in the current market is how broadly the title “Storyteller” has spread. It used to be a slightly precious way for digital-native media companies to describe writers. Now it’s showing up everywhere, doubling in job posting frequency in the past year.
The University of Miami is hiring a Storytelling Specialist. The WILD Foundation, an environmental nonprofit, is hiring a Digital Storyteller. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce needs a Director, Writer and Storyteller in Washington, D.C.
What’s happening is that organizations across sectors have realized they have a communication problem. They have expertise, data, a mission, and a product, but they struggle to translate those into language that connects with real people.
So they’re hiring for that skill directly, and they’re reaching for the language of storytelling because “Head of Content” doesn’t quite capture the depth of what they actually need.
Editorial Roles Are Moving Into Non-Media Companies
The same shift is visible in how traditional editorial titles are appearing outside their usual habitat.
Goop is hiring an Editorial Director. LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, posted for a Head of Editorial Services. Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit, is looking for an Editorial Specialist.
None of these are journalism jobs in the traditional sense. But they all require the same core skills: judgment about what to publish and what to cut, the ability to edit for clarity and voice, and an instinct for structure and pacing.
If you want a fuller picture of what these roles actually involve day to day, our guide on what a managing editor does covers the fundamentals that cross over into almost every editorial-adjacent title – but then apply those same skills in a less traditional environment, perhaps outside of media and publishing. The employer might be a tech company, an organizing committee, or a democracy advocacy nonprofit. The craft is the same.
Content Strategy Is Now Business Infrastructure
The most lasting change is that content strategy has become standard business infrastructure.
A generation ago, these organizations would have had a PR person and maybe a marketing coordinator. Now they have content teams, editorial calendars, and job descriptions that read like something you’d see at a digital publisher. That shift has been years in the making. The current market just makes it impossible to ignore.
What This Means for Your Media Career
If you have a background in journalism, editorial, or content, the honest picture right now is this: there may be fewer staff jobs at the publications you grew up reading. But the total demand for your skills has not necessarily declined; rather, it has dispersed across a more diverse range of industries.
The companies hiring are looking for the same things great content professionals have always offered: the ability to organize complex information, write for a specific audience, make judgment calls about what matters, and produce work consistently at a high level. Those skills don’t expire when a magazine folds.
If you’re making a move from a newsroom to a corporate or nonprofit environment, our piece on what journalists should know before switching to PR covers a lot of the same terrain. And advice from writers in the traditional sense of the profession still applies very well to this new era.
The required adjustment is mostly a matter of framing. A managing editor who spent ten years at a digital publication may not immediately see herself as a candidate for Head of Editorial Services at an organizing committee, even though the underlying skills overlap substantially. The move means accepting that the audience is different, the org chart looks different, and the success metrics are different. But the craft transfers.
The market for content professionals is growing, even in the age of AI. It is reaching into places it never used to, and the pay in those new places often exceeds what traditional media ever offered.
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