Senior Sports Journalist
The Bournemouth Echo is looking for a top-class sports journalist to cover AFC Bournemouth and other sports in our area.
We are committed to covering Cherries, whichever league the club plays in, and we are looking for a digital reporter who can deliver exclusives, exciting live blogs, accurate and engrossing match reports, exclusive interviews, analysis, Facebook lives, and build a connection with the club and its supporters.
In this role, you will drive digital subscriptions and report to the editor, joining an exciting and enthusiastic newsroom in the centre of Bournemouth.
You will be responsible for holding the club to account, as well as highlighting its successes on and off the pitch.
The successful candidate will have a passion for digital storytelling and should be able to find new ways of communicating with readers.
This will include broadcasting on Facebook lives, working on daily newsletters, and engaging with fans.
The job will not be 9-5 and you will be responsible for covering Cherries games home and away and liaising with the news department to ensure that nothing is missed.
Audience analytics will be a big part of the role, and you will be able to use data to spot what to write next and how to maximise the potential audience for your stories and identify trends.
You will not be stuck at home but will be working amid the buzz of our newsroom on reaction, transfer gossip, stats-based features, happenings around the club and carrying out interviews with players and staff.
You’ll be fast to react to what happens on and off the pitch but also capable of meeting a demanding content plan – week in, week out.
You will also be responsible for covering other sports and sports-related stories, particularly in the Premier League off-season.
Benefits include
- A competitive basic salary
- Performance-based bonuses
- Contributory Pension
- Perks & Discounts
- Opportunities for team building and training days
- Full 25 days paid holiday + statutory bank holidays + your birthday day off!
- Holiday purchase scheme
- Structured career progression, ongoing training, and personal performance reviews
- Discount Vouchers
- Discounted Gym membership
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Mental Health Support via Lifeworks
- Eye test vouchers plus £50 towards new glasses.
- Annual Volunteer Charity day
Key responsibilities:
• Driving digital subscriptions by writing high-quality, accurate digital sports stories, live blogs and features to deadlines as agreed
• Using a range of digital tools and platforms to tell stories, including video, audio, infographics and maps
• Using your SEO skills to spot trends and opportunities to reach the largest possible audience
• Crafting and posting social media posts to sell your stories and drive engagement
• Engaging with fans both in person and on social media and reflecting their views
• Using social media to build contacts and sniff out the best stories from your clubs and fan communities
• Engaging our loyal readers and expanding our reach through bespoke email newsletters and subscription messaging
• Being first to report accurate breaking sports news from your patch to keep readers bang up-to-date
• Thinking creatively to come up with new story ideas and ways to deliver them to our audience that suit our digital platforms
• Building our digital audience and social media following to bring our content to even more people in the community
• Spotting national/regional content that could resonate in your patch and making it relevant and interesting to our readers
• With guidance from the newsroom team, using analytics to identify what our readers like and what they want next from our coverage
• Building contacts in the community and getting out and about on your patch to see what’s going on
• Joining forces with your counterparts across the UK to share ideas, best practices, success stories and skills
• An interest in a variety of diverse sports – not just football – and a good knowledge of the UK sports scene is important
Ideally, you will have:
• An NCTJ qualification
• A versatile, fresh and energetic writing style
• Exceptional attention to detail
• The ability to write – and think – quickly under pressure
• An adaptable style to produce everything from live blogs and listicles to long reads and features
• Skills with shooting and editing video as well as online tools and apps for producing images and audio
• A keen news sense
• Bags of ideas for how stories can be presented in the best possible way for our audiences
• An understanding of what audiences want, and when
• Knowledge of SEO and its importance to digital journalism
• Excellent knowledge of relevant media law as it affects sports news
• Firm grasp of local and national sports media content and coverage, and what digital sports news looks like in 2023
• Excellent social media skills and the ability to spot stories and trending topics
• Great people skills and the ability to get on with a wide range of people in the community
• A high level of organisation and the ability to manage your diary out on the patch
• Collaborative skills to pool ideas with the wider digital reporting team and take on board suggestions
If this sounds like a role for you then please send your CV and a brief covering letter/email to james.johnson@newsquest.co.uk
Newsquest Media Group is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all community sections regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Our recruitment process will consist of various stages and activities, as part of our commitment to fairness to all applicants, we will take into account any adjustments that could help you.
