Journalist, Social Media Team, BBC News Russian in London

Join to apply for the role at BBC. Package Description:

• Job Reference: 23824
• Band: C
• Salary: £27,300 - £37,300, depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience.
• Contract type: Permanent
• Location: Office Base is London

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.

Freelancers are eligible to apply for an internal role if they are on a Worker Contract and they have worked continuously for 6 months. If they have worked for less than 6 months continuously or have a break of 3 weeks or more between engagements, they must seek Divisional HR approval to apply for an internal role prior to submitting an application.

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 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 News Russian is one of the largest of the BBC’s language services, providing non-stop multimedia content on BBC platforms and social media across the world. Our output adheres to BBC’s values of accuracy and impartiality, free from commercial, political and religious affiliations or pressures.

With teams based in London and Riga, and led by the Assistant Editor, the BBC News Russian social media team plays a vital role in producing innovative and original digital content, and reaching and engaging with Russian Service audiences, especially at a time when so many of our platforms are blocked in Russia.

We are looking for an experienced, creative and self-motivated social media journalist to join our London team. The successful candidate will be responsible for supporting multiplatform social strategy, ensuring our ideas and editorial values are upheld on every account and with every post.

The social media journalist reports to the Assistant Editor to ensure each account delivers on the agreed social strategy, maximizes engaged reach with the account's target audiences, delivers content of the highest creative quality, and drives traffic to BBC pages. This requires not only a solid background across all social platforms, but a strong command of visual mediums, journalistic best practices, and engaging storytelling. Awareness of big news moments, ability to work with a large flow of information and a comfort not only in social app usage but with the analytics to make sense of success on those platforms a must. Experience visual content and creating video and repurposing existing assets into social formats is key to the ideal candidate for this role.

Main Responsibilities:

• Collaborate across different editorial teams, bringing their work on news and features to life across platforms.
• Create for, post on, and engage with the leading social media platforms of the day.
• Produce visual and text content that is optimized for social platforms in line with the BBC’s style guide and tone.
• Deeply understand the features of social media platforms, propose and create formats and sections suitable for these platforms.
• Contribute ideas, angles and engaging formats to meetings on how to cover the main news of the day in social media.
• Contribute to forward-looking planning.
• Find and produce stories for the Russian Service social media accounts, including producing and editing your own materials.
• Develop creative storytelling approaches to social and online content, utilizing existing and new tools.
• Review and respond to analytics to understand performance and pivot accordingly.
• Remain current in industry trends, digital developments and competitor activity and share new thinking.
• Maintain a collaborative, team-player mentality, working toward collective goals alongside a very talented group of colleagues.

Are you the right candidate? Candidates Must Demonstrate:

• Proven professional experience in social media and especially in digital media.
• Solid photo and video editing experience.
• Fluent usage of visual editing software (Photoshop/Figma, Canva, Final Cut).
• In-depth understanding of digital and social platforms (esp. Telegram, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X) - the BBC’s and others - and the different ways audiences are consuming news.
• Strong visual awareness, attention to detail and aesthetics.
• A full command and up to date knowledge of Russian (native language or equivalent) and fluent English.
• Good knowledge of news and current affairs for Russia and FSU and internationally.
• Proven editorial judgment and flair, able to make sound decisions quickly.
• Strong knowledge of relevant legal and editorial policy issues.
• Ability to work well and calmly in a pressurized live 24-hour newsroom environment; and to handle a rapidly changing news agenda.
• It’s a hybrid role that will require you to work nights, weekends and to come into BBC Broadcasting House on a regular basis.
• Sound understanding of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and commitment to the editorial aims of BBC.

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.

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.

Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory.