A New Advisor

We’re delighted to have recently added a new member to our board of advisors, Julia B. Chan. Julia is the Director of Audience at Mother Jones, where she leads new digital and engagement projects. She was previously the digital editor at The Center for Investigative Reporting where she managed content strategy, story production and audience engagement for long-form investigative work, and helped develop and produce the award-winning podcast and radio show, “Reveal.”  

Outside of the newsroom, Julia serves on AAJA’s national governing board and founded Journalists of Color, a global community of digitally savvy and diverse journalists.

We’ll let Julia introduce herself, below.

What is your role at Mother Jones?

I’m the Director of Audience, a new role at Mother Jones. I sit at the intersection of multiple departments – editorial, engagement, and business operations – and am experimenting with how our newsroom can interact with readers. I’m building a cross-functional cohort of reporters, editors and co-conspirators to develop and execute public-powered projects. And I’m closely assessing these experiments in order to leverage the results for a larger strategy.

The spirit of my role is to inform and inspire audience members and, in turn, be informed and inspired by them.

Why is The Coral Project’s work important?

Coral believes that the audience should be an essential part of the journalism. I do, too. By tapping into the power of our readers, listeners, viewers, and more, we can gain insight—and data—to inform how we do our jobs as reporters, editors, designers, developers, and more. Across platforms, it’s communities that are identifying digital trends and deciding whether or not they succeed. We should take every opportunity to talk to them, absorb their feedback, and earn their loyalty.

How are you helping The Coral Project to improve its work?

My journalism career has been a bit unconventional: I started out in 2003 as a music writer with a Myspace habit. But during the 14 years that followed, it’s that excitement for social and digital media that led me to work across platforms in breaking news and investigative journalism. I hope to reflect on these these experiences when advising The Coral Project—I want to ask good questions, use my imagination, and inspire new ideas.