Join Team BTL

It’s been several years since Between The Lines first graced your inboxes with daily news summaries, insights and our brand of humour.

And we’re happy to say that as our ace community of readers is growing, so must our lil’ BTL family.

As such, Between The Lines is hiring! Huzzah!

We're looking for:

At Between the Lines (BTL), we believe that everyone should be informed. But who has the time to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle? That’s where our newsletter comes in!

In a nutshell, BTL is a paid tell-it-as-it-is English newsletter — the first in Malaysia, in fact! — that distils and summarises the biggest news stories in Malaysia each day and contextualises them in an easy-to-read weekday email newsletter. Not only do we explain why the news matters, we like to do it with a joke, or 10. ‘Cos our unofficial tagline is, “if you don’t laugh at the news, you’d probably cry!”

In essence, we’re a fun media startup comprising a small passionate team that punches way above our weight. And at 3 years old, we’re exploring different and exciting avenues of growth.

Who we’re looking for

Do you have a nose (all shapes welcome) for news? Do you find daily news too frustrating and overwhelming? Do you feel like there’s got to be a better way to make things more digestible for John and Jane Q. Public? Can you write? Can you make and take a joke? Are you willing to learn? Oh, and are night owls your favourite bird? If this is you, we’d love to have you!

BTL’s all about helping folks keep up with Malaysian (and international) news, and more importantly, to understand what the heck’s going on! And we need help getting the message across.

What you’ll be doing

  • Monitoring various Malaysian and international news sites for the day’s/week’s biggest/most significant news.
  • Assessing and pitching story ideas at BTL’s daily editorial meetings and when and where required, including for special reports.
  • Working closely with the head of editorial and other team members.
  • Writing and delivering an agreed upon set of stories for BTL’s daily newsletter.
  • Assisting with edits if and where required.
  • Championing the BTL brand and the work we do.

Qualifications

  • Above all else, you need to be a self-starter who is curious and eager to learn.
  • Can work fast, mainly in the evening/at night and deliver on time.
  • Can write and deliver clean English language copy.
  • Has a strong news sense, and familiarity with Malaysian politics and news
  • Has a strong foundation in ethical media and journalistic best practices. Ideally, this means you have newsroom experience. But we’d be eager to speak with you even if you don’t and/or can’t tell Sunway Pyramid from the inverted news pyramid.
  • General experience with content management systems is a plus as is an interest in new media technologies.

What’s in it for you

  • This role is fully remote for the foreseeable future.
  • This is a part-time contract role. However, we place importance on fair compensation

Who we’re looking for

If you’re an aspiring product operations manager with a creative spirit (i.e. keen to experiment and test out new ideas) while getting real-life customer feedback and learning on the job, then we’re looking for YOU to come along with us on this ride!

Come join us in our quest to roll out new products, reach more eyeballs and new audiences, grow our subscriber base, and, of course, uphold our mission of keeping folks up-to-date.

What you’ll be doing

  • Lead & manage audience development initiatives, with the goal of delighting, retaining and expanding our audience and subscriber base. Be passionate about providing an enjoyable user experience and engagement journey for all components of BTL, starting with our core subscription product, and moving on to new features as we grow.
  • Have a hand in content management, including helping in uploading special reports and creating simple “design assets” using any tools you’re comfortable with. Experience with Adobe Illustrator is great, but you’re free to use anything you want – yes, even Canva and Procreate! (whatever gets the job done!)
  • Play the role of data whisperer by working with us to interpret the metrics and identify problems and/or solutions and/or business needs.
  • Work with developers, where necessary, to resolve technical issues.

Skills Required

  • Above all else, a self-starter who is curious and eager to learn, be it new tools for the web, WordPress, newsletter SaaS tools, new project management concepts, etc. We need to stay nimble in order to adapt quickly to the rapidly changing market.
  • Experience in digital marketing and audience development (Psst! If you have a basic understanding of product management, even design sprint process, we’d love to talk to you even more.)
  • Basic coding skills
  • Experience with content management, email, and other digital marketing tools (We are always looking to improve and expand our products, ideally without hardcoding everything- because we’re still tiny!)
  • An eye for clean design and user experience (UI/UX skills and/or experience would be a bonus)
  • Interest in news and subscriptions are bonuses

What’s in it for you

  • This role is fully remote for the foreseeable future, with flexible timing.
  • This is a part-time contract role for the next 12 months as we grow. However, we place importance on fair compensation

Those interested in applying need to fill out this simple Google Form: