PEP, Archivist

Job Description

The Opportunity

Versant is seeking a PEP Archivist to support the Archive team in researching, maintaining, archiving, restoring, and making media content available for teams across the Versant media landscape. This freelance role serves a broad range of internal and external clients, including show units, promotions and marketing, specials, long-form programming, digital teams, and Archive Sales operations.

Why This Role Matters: The Archivist/Researcher helps ensure Versant’s media assets are discoverable, accurate, rights-aware, and available when teams need them. This role supports daily coverage, breaking news, historical research, editorial planning, and long-term preservation of valuable media content.

This is an onsite role based in New Jersey and requires flexibility to support early mornings, nights, overnights, weekends, holidays, and short-notice breaking news requests. This role is overtime-eligible.

What You'll Do

• Manage daily archival research requests for shows and teams across the Versant News landscape.
• Research, screen, log, tag, and make available video content for show units, promotions and marketing, specials, long-form programming, digital teams, and other internal or external clients.
• Fulfill external client requests in support of Archive Sales operations.
• Make archival retention decisions for incoming content and add essential metadata, visual shot lists, transcripts, restrictions, and other required information.
• Partner with Producers and Rights & Clearances to support proper footage use in accordance with Versant Media’s Standards & Practices.
• Coordinate digitization, retrieval, return shipment, storage, and technical support needs for physical and digital media assets, including work with external storage and internal support or engineering teams.

Qualifications

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, liberal arts, or a related field preferred.
• Demonstrated knowledge of current and historical general and business news, including local and international events, world leaders, and places in the news.
• Strong computer research skills, including experience searching and entering information in database applications.
• Familiarity with media asset management systems and non-linear editing platforms.
• Ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously and deliver accurate, high-quality work in a tight deadline environment.
• Strong interpersonal skills, clear communication, and a customer-focused approach.
• Ability to work both collaboratively and independently as business needs require.
• Flexibility to work early mornings, nights, overnights, weekends, holidays, and short-notice breaking news coverage as requested.

You’ll also bring Versant’s How We Do It behaviors to the work:

• Trust: You handle media assets, metadata, restrictions, and archival decisions with accuracy, care, and sound judgment.
• Teamwork: You partner effectively with producers, editorial teams, Rights & Clearances, engineering, support teams, external clients, and storage partners.
• Transparency: You communicate clearly about available holdings, restrictions, technical issues, asset status, and research findings.
• Agility: You balance multiple requests, shifting priorities, breaking news needs, and tight deadlines in a fast-paced archive environment.
• Entrepreneurial Spirit: You take initiative to anticipate archival needs, improve discoverability, and learn new tools and workflows.

Bonus points for 3+ years of experience in an archival or library setting, experience logging and researching archival material, or knowledge of AVID Media Composer, Interplay, Media Central Cloud UX, Stratus, and iNews.

Why You’ll Love It Here

You’ll be part of a fast-paced media environment where research, journalism, technology, and preservation come together every day. This freelance PEP role offers the opportunity to support high-impact news, business, entertainment, sports, digital, promotional, and long-form content needs while helping teams access and use Versant’s media assets responsibly.

This role is based onsite in New Jersey and requires flexibility to support business needs, including early mornings, nights, weekends, holidays, and short-notice breaking news coverage.

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected].

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.