Journalist (Radio Newcastle) - EXTEND

Salary: £27,300 - £32,481 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract type: Permanent full-time role including weekend and evening shifts.

Location: Office Base is Newcastle. 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.

We are committed to making the process of applying for this role as accessible as possible. If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the application process, or have any questions about our Extend programme, please contact the BBC Extend team via the shared mailbox. The BBC are fully committed to providing workplace adjustments to help eliminate barriers in the workplace that disabled people face. To do this, we have our own dedicated BBC Access and Disability Service that provides assessments and support throughout employment with us. If you are successful in applying for this role and require workplace adjustments, we will work with you to get your adjustments in place.

About the Role

Are you a team player looking to join a new audio team in the BBC where your skillset will be acknowledged and nurtured? Do you want to move to a new way of working within an ambitious broadcasting station? A great opportunity to join an ambitious team here at Radio Newcastle. If you love telling local stories that matter to the people that live here in the North East both digitally and on the radio, we want to hear from you.

We’re looking for an experienced, versatile journalist to join the team here at BBC Radio Newcastle. You’ll need to be hands on and have a passion for storytelling, with experience in breaking news, a great news reading voice, production and digital journalism skills. You’ll need to be a motivated, multi-skilled journalist to help shape our content, focusing on bringing to life the stories that matter to our audience.

We want a driven and passionate person who is keen to reach new audiences through our various platforms. You’ll know what audiences expect from different platforms and how to turn around a multi-platform story under a tight deadline. The role requires someone who will be keen to do more than just look for press releases – we want original and inclusive ideas that help reflect the diverse audience Newcastle.

Please send an example no longer than 3 minutes of your newsreading/broadcast voice to when you apply.

Are you the right candidate?

Have you got examples of your stories reaching digital audiences? We need people who match our ambition for the station. The role is demanding and we set high standards. But we also want to have fun. If you’re a journalist with plenty of ideas for brilliant visual storytelling as well as audio then we want to hear from you. You will work on a wide range of stories with the audience at the heart of it. You must be as skilled in researching, briefing and scripting around an interview, as chatting to a presenter and engaging with our listeners.

You will also need to:

• Have the ability to help us tell our stories digitally as well as on the radio.
• Play a big part in putting the shows together both at the planning stage and producing while on air as a Journalist.
• Be able to come up with original story ideas, guests and creative treatments and carry out background research.
• Be flexible as there may be shifts which require news reading skills.
• Have experience of responding to breaking news with the ability to summarise complex issues calmly and clearly under significant time pressure.
• You may be sent to produce an Outside Broadcast so live production experience is critical.

Our producers work with colleagues across BBC News and other parts of the corporation. We expect high quality writing skills and the highest standards of accuracy, impartiality and fair dealing in accordance with the BBC's Editorial values. Our audience are using us 7 days a week so there’s an expectation of regular weekend work or early shifts.

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 the application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.

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.

Recruitment Process

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.