Deputy Press Secretary for Creative Partnerships & Black Media

Deputy Press Secretary for Creative Partnerships & Black Media

The Agency You'll Join: The New York City Mayor's Office is responsible for overseeing city services throughout the five boroughs, coordinating public agencies and departments, and managing public property. The administration is leading the fight in making the city more affordable, reducing inequality, improving public safety, ensuring delivery of efficient and effective services, and working to make New York City's economy stronger. We value leadership, transparency, fairness, and efficiency as we actively seek diverse talents from various sectors to join our team. For current job opportunities, visit our careers page. The Team You'll Work With: The Mayor's Press Office at City Hall is responsible for media monitoring, responding to media inquiries, preparing senior administration officials for media interviews, and planning media events designed to communicate accurate, timely information to the public. The Office of New Media and Cultural Communications is helping to transform the traditional press arm of the Mayor's office into one that includes and engages new media, ensuring that Mayor Mamdani's agenda and achievements reach and mobilize New Yorkers who have historically been left out of the governing process. The Office oversees constituency media relations and ensures a consistent narrative reaches all New York audiences and engages new media and influencers to pitch and deliver stories to the places where New Yorkers get their news.

The Problems You'll Solve: The Deputy Press Secretary for Creative Partnerships & Black Media will serve as a senior operator at the intersection of media, culture, and community responsible for translating the administration's priorities into high-impact storytelling across creators, digital platforms, and community-based outlets. This role sits at the intersection of press, partnerships, and culture leading execution of creator-facing media strategy while driving engagement with Black media and other key community outlets. It is a strategic and execution-heavy position for someone who can operate like both a press secretary and a creative producer in fast-moving, high-visibility environments.

Key Responsibilities:

• New Media Strategy & Execution: Lead day-to-day execution of new media press strategy across creators, influencers, and digital-first outlets. Translate policy announcements into culturally fluent, platform-native content opportunities. Identify and secure high-impact creator and nontraditional media hits (TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, Substack, etc.).
• Black Media & Community Press Engagement: Build and maintain strong relationships with Black media outlets, journalists, and community voices. Develop proactive media strategies to ensure consistent, meaningful engagement with Black audiences. Support outreach to broader ethnic and community media, including Spanish-language, South Asian, and other key outlets.
• Creative Partnerships: Build and manage relationships with creators, neighborhood pages, cultural figures, and digital first-outlets. Oversee development of creator activations (press conferences, campaign rollouts, cultural moments). Partner with talent teams, agents, and managers to secure participation and maximize reach.
• Comms Integration: Integrate new media and community press into broader communications strategy, ensuring alignment with traditional media and messaging. Draft talking points, briefing materials, and Q&A tailored to creator and community media interviews. Staff the Mayor at media opportunities and manage on-the-ground execution.
• Rapid Response & Narrative: Identify moments to insert the Mayor into real-time cultural and political conversations. Coordinate quick-turn creator and community media responses to breaking news and narrative shifts. Help shape overarching narrative arcs across platforms and audiences.
• Team Leadership: Help manage and mentor New Media Press Assistants. Oversee workflow, approvals, and execution pipelines for creator and media engagement. Build systems for tracking outreach, coverage, and performance.
• Metrics & Evaluation: Track performance across creator partnerships and media engagement (views, reach, engagement, sentiment). Identify high-performing partners and scale ongoing relationships. Contribute to reporting and strategic optimization.

About You: You have a strong existing relationship with creators, influencers, or digital outlets. You have a deep understanding of TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and emerging platforms. You have experience staffing principals and managing high-pressure media environments. You have strong writing skills across formats (briefings, talking points, pitches). You can operate both strategically and in rapid execution mode

Minimum Qualifications

- High School diploma or equivalent required. - 4+ years of experience in government communications, digital media, political campaigns, or creator partnerships.

Preferred Skills

- You have a deep online and culturally fluent both nationally and within New York City. - You have a strong understanding of Black media ecosystems and community-based communications. - You can stay calm under pressure, fast-moving, and highly organized. - You have strong political instincts paired with strong internet instincts. - You are detail-oriented with the ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness

As a prospective employee of the City of New York, you may be eligible for federal loan forgiveness programs and state repayment assistance programs. For more information, please visit the U.S. Department of Education's website.

Residency Requirement

New York City residency is generally required within 90 days of appointment. However, City Employees in certain titles who have worked for the City for 2 continuous years may also be eligible to reside in Nassau, Suffolk, Putnam, Westchester, Rockland, or Orange County. To determine if the residency requirement applies to you, please discuss with the agency representative at the time of the interview.

Additional Information

The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.