Senior Journalist

Journalism
- Permanent - Full Time
- Belfast, GB, BT2 8HQ
- BBC PUBLIC SERVICE B'CAST
- Job Closing Date: 16/02/2025

**THE ROLE**:
**Package Description**:
**Extend**: EX2324

**Job Reference**: 21142

**Band**: D

**Salary**: £39,800 - £47,126 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

**Location**: Office Base is Belfast
- 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, gym and much more.

If you’d like more information on BBC Extend, please visit the BBC Extend webpage.

**Job Introduction**:
BBC News Northern Ireland provides breaking news, analysis, features and debate plus coverage on topical issues across all platforms for local audiences and beyond. We are transforming its news operation to make it future fit in a rapidly changing and diversifying news media climate, with digital at its heart.

We expect to have a number of full-time and part-time positions across our News teams, both continuing and fixed-term contracts.

**Main Responsibilities**:
Senior Journalists need to be creative thinkers who can lead journalists in their area to deliver the best possible output for our audiences. Senior Journalists will be required to work on digital content, on the BBC News NI's website, on daily programmes, such as BBC Newsline or Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster, or in the News Content area.

Senior Journalists will be required to:

- Lead daily production meetings in their output area and then assign tasks to Journalists, Reporters and Researchers.
- Commission output for their production area and deploy resources in a cost-effective way.
- Motivate teams to think creatively and respond quickly to breaking news.
- Contribute to the production of original journalism.
- Provide forward planning and production support.
- Deal with complex legal and editorial issues.
- Influence BBC News NI's news agenda, advise output editors and News Content colleagues on the importance of particular issues.
- Work mostly at base but on location as required.
- Support junior staff members to help them grow and develop in their role.
- Support the management team through a period of change in the newsroom.

You will need;
- Extensive editorial experience, a strong news judgement as well as comprehensive experience of operating calmly under pressure.
- Experience in managing people, good interpersonal and communication skills and a keenness to collaborate.
- A strong grasp of editorial and legal issues and an ability to deal with complex editorial issues in a highly pressurised environment.
- To be resilient and highly-motivated self-starter.
- A track record in delivering original journalism.
- The ability to write clear and concise copy to run across all outlets.
- An understanding of how audiences operate in the digital space.
- Knowledge of our audience need and output demonstrating a commitment to diversity and inclusion.
- A sound knowledge of politics, current affairs and ongoing issues in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and further afield.

**About the BBC**:
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.

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.