THE ROLE

Package Description

Job Reference: 18049

Band: C

Salary: £27,300 - £32,533 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type: 3 Month Fixed Term Contract / Attachment

Location: Office Base is Plymouth

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
Benefits - We offer a negotiable salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care and gym. You can find out more about working at the BBC by selecting this link to our candidate pack.

If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process please contact the reasonable.adjustments@bbc.co.uk. For any general queries, please contact: bbchr@bbc.co.uk.

Job Introduction

BBC Local is the family of services we offer across local communities in England, including radio, online, social media and TV. With famous brands and new platforms, we provide a rich mix of content and programming from news to entertainment.

BBC South West is looking for a motivated, innovative online journalist to help shape our digital agenda and roll out our stories across all of our platforms in the most effective way, reaching and connecting with our local audiences.

This will be a truly multimedia role with an emphasis on digital-first storytelling and finding and telling stories which will all run on our digital and social media channels, television and radio. We want driven and passionate journalists who want to help reach new audiences with the news that matters to them. The role requires someone who will be keen to do more than just look for press releases – we want original ideas that help reflect the diverse audience that lives across the South West. Creative treatments, gaining great access to people at the heart of stories and working collaboratively with a wide range of colleagues are essential.

Main Responsibilities

Producing local news content for the BBC website and social media accounts for the South West and beyond
Being ready to produce fast, accurate copy when a big story breaks – it’s likely to be on the BBC News frontpage, so you’ll need to be confident writing quickly
Responsible for originating and producing stories for the BBC website which can also be used on other outlets, as well as turning around content from wires and press releases.
Working with colleagues to ensure all our journalism works across digital, TV and audio platforms.
To tailor different news treatments for different audiences ensuring that the output reflects the audiences we serve.
Use social and video to help your journalism travel further.
You need to be adept at technology, picking up new skills and adapting to the changing demands of a newsroom.
Knowledge of the south west region is preferable but not essential.
The role requires some weekend working and early/late start times.

Are you the right candidate?

The ideal candidate will meet the following criteria;

Have sound editorial judgement, making decisions on matters of editorial sensitivity under pressure.
You should be curious and creative in your approach to delivering original journalism.
Able to write clean, accurate and concise copy with quick turnaround times, for publication on the BBC News website.
Be familiar with social media in a news context and know how to make the most of various platforms to reach a range of audiences
Understanding of SEO within a news context to help our stories reach the people most interested in and impacted by them.
Comfortable with creating video content for social platforms, particularly aimed at younger and female audiences

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.

DISCLAIMER

This job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

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