Journalist, News Labs

Job Description

Band: C

Contract Type: 1 x Journalist Permanent and 1 x 80% Journalist Permanent

Location: Cardiff

Salary: Up to £38,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Job Application Requirements:

• CV
• Questionnaire with opportunity to detail experience

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 competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days holiday (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

Job Introduction

This is a chance for you to shape innovation at the heart of BBC News.

News Labs is a multi-skilled innovation team which sits between research and development, engineering, design and news. Reaching new audiences and improving journalists’ ability to tell good stories quickly and effectively are our key objectives. The News Labs editorial team needs individuals with a range of skills to help us deliver those objectives by turning ideas into innovations.

We are looking for a journalist to help us explore different opportunities, from integrating audience insights into a content management system to helping build relationships between the audience and BBC correspondents through participation on the BBC’s Live pages, all while making BBC News content more accessible to a wider range of audiences.

The successful candidate will flourish working as part of a multi-skilled team to provide editorial and audience insight and project support. You will enjoy building productive working relationships with a wide range of innovative individuals and organisations inside and outside the BBC and be comfortable adjusting your style to successfully work alongside them.

You can see some of our projects on our website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/rdnewslabs

Main Responsibilities

• Working closely with editorial stakeholders and the News Labs team to identify projects which create impact on BBC journalism;
• Contribute to the design and development of innovation projects from conception to prototype;
• Support multidisciplinary teams with editorial guidance and project management and act as a bridge between software engineers and the newsroom.
• Build and maintain collaborative network of relationships across the BBC;
• Seek out and monitor external innovations of interest to BBC News;
• Take part in industry hackathons and represent News Labs at conferences and events

Are you the right person?

• Experience as a journalist with good knowledge of a variety of production techniques;
• Sound editorial knowledge with a clear understanding of the BBC’s distinctive news agenda and the requirements of news and current affairs coverage;
• Understanding of the demands of different audiences and the challenges of meeting their needs;
• Effective planning and organisational skills, ability to concentrate on several areas of work at one time and reacting positively to changing priorities;
• Experience of working with Agile techniques and ceremonies to ensure projects progress to time and fulfil their scopes;
• An enthusiasm and willingness to experiment and test new solutions to problems faced by editorial and technical teams for the benefit of the global BBC audience;
• The ability to communicate and collaborate is vital. You will need to be encouraging and supportive to the team and willing to take a leadership role;
• The ability to work independently on small projects and collaboratively on larger team initiatives;
• Experience of software development in one or more programming languages (eg: JavaScript, Node.js, Python) is helpful but is not essential.

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.