Senior News Editor, West Midlands – BBC (Birmingham)

Package Description

Job ID: 018052

Salary: £70,000 – £86,500 per annum, depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Band: F

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Based in Birmingham with travel across the West Midlands

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, gym and much more.

Job Introduction

BBC Local provides a rich mix of content across Online, TV, radio, on demand, social and mobile platforms for audiences across England. Our aims to reflect society in all its different aspects – providing impartial news and current affairs and showcasing local stories, talent and creativity – are as important today as at any time in our history. There is a really strong appetite for local programmes and content on all our platforms.

Our local TV 1830 news programmes are the most watched news programme in the UK, bar none. We are ambitious for the future of BBC Local and now we want to ensure that our multimedia service delivers effectively across the BBC’s mobile portfolio, including BBC Sounds, iPlayer, BBC News and BBC Sport.

The Senior News Editor for the West Midlands reports to the regional Senior Head of Production, Hayley Valentine, and leads the delivery of high quality and engaging journalism across online/mobile, tv and radio.

Main Responsibilities

The Senior News Editor is responsible for an integrated, multi-media news operation spanning multiple local bases. You will set the standard when it comes to promoting and embracing a collaborative team culture focused on delivering value to all audiences across our platforms.

In this role, you will ensure the delivery of outstanding, distinctive journalism when and where the audience wants it – across online/mobile, on demand, tv, radio and social. We want the BBC to serve new and existing audiences and grow new habits across live and on-demand services. You will lead a process of organisational and continuous change to establish and embed a ‘digital first’ news operation where all news teams work together as one for the benefit of our audiences.

You will manage and motivate production teams across multiple sites to deliver creative and innovative content, ensuring that programmes and content meet their audience objectives whilst driving improvements in the diversity of the workforce to ensure the full diversity of local life and communities is reflected on air.

You will work closely with the Head of Production, other Senior News Editors and the Executive Editors as part of a multi-media leadership team within the region and act as an ambassador for the BBC. You will collaborate with peers and the regional Senior Head of Production to develop and deliver shared programmes that engage local audiences across multiple local broadcast areas, striving to ensure that the audio and news teams work effectively together in partnership.

You will ensure audience data and insights are at the heart of story choices and treatment and that innovation and visual storytelling help shape the output on a daily basis.

Are you the right candidate?

To succeed in this role, you will need the ability to adapt to ongoing business change, and help others to do so with inspirational leadership. You will support career development and talent retention and act as role model to your teams and colleagues.
You should be able to demonstrate first rate editorial judgement with experience of supporting the delivery of high impact and original journalism, taking challenging editorial decisions and dealing with matters of legal sensitivity under pressure.
You should have experience of creative production and complex editorial decision-making with the ability to look ahead and to continue to develop creative content in response to changing audience habits.
We are looking for a leader with a track record of establishing a positive, engaged and supportive culture within teams and a demonstrable ability to collaborate and build strong relationships. You will have excellent communication and influencing skills with experience in managing complex relationships and ensuring outcomes are met through a culture of collaboration, dialogue and engagement across all levels.

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. 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.

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.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.