Reader Comments Journalist – The Times and The Sunday Times (London)
The reader comments journalist is responsible for moderating comments from our subscribers, eliciting stories from our readers and sourcing expert contributors for conversation threads.
This role will also involve hosting expert Q&As in the comment sections of articles that could benefit from added explanation or insight. You will work as part of a team to foster high-quality discussions on the Times and Sunday Times website and to ensure our online comments remain at the highest possible standard.
Apply with a covering letter and your CV by July 4.
Responsibilities
- Ensuring our reader comments are maintained and moderated to the highest standard
- Fostering high quality discussions in the comment section of The Times and The Sunday Times website
- Pitching strong ideas for reader led stories
- Sourcing expert contributors to drive reader engagement
- Pitching ideas for expert Q&As and hosting them in the comments section
Skills and experience
- Experienced journalist with strong news judgement
- A journalism degree, journalism masters or an NCTJ qualification
- Ability to interpret and apply legal training
- Demonstrable experience working on comment moderation or reader engagement and an interest in driving online engagement with news
- Highly organised, able to manage multiple projects simultaneously
- An understanding of online communities, and how to foster and grow debate
- Able to collaborate with others, including senior editors and work well in groups
- Can clearly articulate ideas
- Able to work under pressure and to tight deadlines
About the digital team
The Times and The Sunday Times represent a combined 400 years of covering news and providing comment and analysis in the UK and the world.
We are authoritative, credible, responsible, trusted and a part of the nation’s cultural heritage.
This role will join our cross-title digital strategy team. The team is charged with finding and telling stories on our digital platforms in the most appropriate formats and empowering the newsroom to present stories in new and innovative ways.
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%;
- 30 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.
