Political Editor – The Scottish Sun (Scotland)

We are The Scottish Sun. The Scottish Sun is Scotland’s No.1, award-winning newsbrand. The Scottish Sun cares about quality of life, the kind of world we live in, and about people. The Scottish Sun is more than a newspaper. It is an instigator, an entertainer, a cultural reference point, a finger on the pulse and a daily relationship. The Scottish Sun strives to the very highest standards of accuracy in its reporting, and continues to invest in original journalism in print and online.

Scottish Political Editor – The Scottish Sun is looking for a Political Editor to drive the political coverage on Scotland’s No.1 newsbrand at a pivotal time in politics, with a General Election fast approaching. We have a reputation for breaking major exclusives while leading the news agenda and presenting the ever-changing world of Scottish and UK politics in a bright and accessible way. We pride ourselves on holding political leaders to account on behalf of our newspaper and digital readers, while providing the depth and detail required to keep people fully informed – as well as entertained.

Your Role: The Scottish Political Editor will be responsible for breaking major exclusives while leading the news agenda and presenting the ever-changing world of Scottish and UK politics in a bright and accessible way to our newspaper and digital readers.

Day to day you will:

You will work with colleagues including the Associate Editor (Politics), and a Scottish Political Reporter, to effectively forward plan and organise political coverage and content over seven days, generating agenda-setting stories and ideas on a daily basis.
Think ‘digital first’, by providing content and ideas tailored to our online platforms as well as our newspapers.
Proactively build positive relationships and a network of contacts across the political spectrum and with organisations.
Maintain a working, in-depth knowledge of the Scottish and UK political landscape.
Responsibility for helping to develop and guide colleagues who report on politics for The Scottish Sun’s platforms, including some management duties.

What we’re looking for from you:

A proven track record for generating agenda-setting stories and ideas, with significant experience in political journalism – or news reporting at the highest level – and a passion for making a difference and improving the lives of readers.
An ability to adapt your style to news, features, commentary, and editorials.
An ability to build good relationships across the political spectrum and with organisations, as well as good knowledge of the use of data.
The experience and ability to forward plan and organise coverage over seven days.
Drive, flexibility and demonstrable experience working as part of a team and independently.
The ability to work under the pressure of tight and frequent deadlines across our seven-day operation.
An in-depth understanding of the Editor’s Code and relevant legislation is essential to the role.

We are News UK: One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland, our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, talkRADIO and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local radio stations across Ireland. In 2022 we launched TalkTV, a major new TV channel available to everyone across the UK, delivering a schedule of news, current affairs, entertainment and sport, with Piers Morgan in a primetime evening show. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning digital and print, audio and video, events and experiences, our brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News: At News UK our people are our heartbeat – they are the driving force behind our brands and we want to enable people to thrive. Some of us work flexibly, in many different ways. We encourage you to talk to us about the flexibility you would like. Many of us work in a hybrid way between one of the News UK & Ireland offices and remotely.

We champion diversity and inclusion, we strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity Board, D&I strategy & training, creating more diverse content and our intern and apprenticeship programmes. We also have 11 employee-led networks.

We take pride in looking after our amazing talent at News UK supporting the Health and Wellbeing of our staff. Some of what we offer includes:

A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%;
25 days holiday and up to 4 volunteering days per year;
Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks;
Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access.
Private medical insurance covering pre-existing conditions
Discounted gym memberships, ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual HIIT, yoga and run club classes
‘Bikes for Work’ scheme
Access to wellbeing benefits such as physio/massage and counselling

We want to ensure that everyone we meet has the opportunity to perform to their best when interviewing. Please let us know, at any stage, whether you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, and we will do our best to accommodate.

News UK is an official partner of the Journalism Diversity Fund, founder of the Journalism and Disability Forum, and proud member of the Valuable 500. At News UK, we will continue to promote an inclusive and diverse workplace, to help people with visible and non visible disabilities create careers in media and aim to make our content accessible to all.