Josh Awtry is an editor and media strategist with more than 25 years of experience leading local and national news teams. 

He focuses on helping media outlets reach new readers in innovative ways, growing reach while improving quality, uniqueness and journalistic relevance. Awtry develops content as well as audience by focusing on staff training, deep data awareness and constant engagement with readership.

He is currently Senior Vice President of Audience at The Hill, a nonpartisan news outlet focused on politics and policy reaching more than 30 million readers each month. In the past year, Awtry has helped The Hill reach a 2-year audience record and a record high in the amount of time readers spend with the site each month.

Prior to his role at The Hill, he spent a decade with Gannett and the USA Today Network, most recently as Vice President of Content Strategy. He helped lead seismic strategic change in hundreds of local newsrooms and at USA TODAY by melding audience trends and data analysis with shoe-leather journalism and newsroom strategy. His focus on understanding what readers want from premium content helped Gannett achieve a milestone of 1.5 million digital subscribers and reach of 140 million people per month.

Awtry’s background is in community news, a topic he's deeply passionate about. He got his start as an evening copy editor at the Grand Island (Nebraska) Independent and has served in newsrooms across the country, from Nebraska to Utah, Idaho, Colorado and the Carolinas. He has led newsrooms as the executive editor of the Coloradoan in Fort Collins, the Greenville News and Asheville Citizen-Times. He was named Gannett’s Innovator of the Year for 2012 for his work reinventing community newsrooms. 

Awtry’s work in newsroom innovation has been featured nationally by, among others, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Society for News Design, the International News Media Alliance and The Poynter Institute. He holds a B.A. in communications with a journalism emphasis and a B.M. in music performance from Hastings College. 

In his spare time, Awtry is a husband, father, casual cyclist, tinkerer and sci-fi fan who can't resist a karaoke night.