News Editor, Visual Journalism – BBC (London)

Reporting to the head of digital formats, your role is to act as a key strategy stakeholder and provide editorial direction for the portfolio of visual journalism and text formats areas within the BBC News Digital development department.

You will be responsible for managing three senior journalist team managers who oversee the daily and short-term output of the visual journalism team, the World Service visual journalism team, and the text formats team.

The teams aim to produce powerful journalism that creatively uses visual elements to improve understanding of the news, and reinvent the way stories are told online. Your work will be informed by business priorities as well as audience research and data. You will steer the testing of new formats, tools and visual journalism on audiences.

You will ensure the teams work together when most effective to, and work independently with clearly distinct purposes. The range of work you’ll provide leadership and editorial direction on includes daily infographic-rich visual journalism, as well as bespoke and impactful visual journalism projects, new production tools and storytelling formats that can be used by other teams at BBC News.

You will be responsible for ensuring your teams learn new skills and their work aligns with the business goals of BBC News and World Service, and you will be expected to foster strong working relationships within the newsroom, including the teams responsible for curating the website’s front page, writing live articles and coordinating special projects.

This is an office-based role, based in Broadcasting House in London, with some occasional travel involved.

• Responsible for ensuring the effective day-to-day running of multi-disciplinary Visual Journalism teams and their output (UK and WS) as well as the Text Formats team (who conceive and launch new ways to tell stories online), supporting the team managers to ensure distinct, impactful output from all three teams and fruitful collaboration when desirable.
• Plan and coordinate short/medium/long term visual journalism and text formats work
• Steer development, testing and rollout of repeatable formats (text and mixed media) to teams across News and World Service.
• Drive adoption of formats and best practice across News and World Service
• Lead and inspire teams through organisational change, leveraging strong leadership skills to ensure effective collaboration, motivation, and high performance
• Work closely with senior counterparts in design, engineering and product teams on an aligned vision and roadmap
• Cultivate and empower a motivated, creative team, ensuring they possess the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to effectively identify, develop, and champion emerging storytelling formats.
• Support stakeholders to make the most of the new storytelling formats and tools, to improve commissioning and workflows through appropriate coaching, training and workshops, increasing efficiency and sharing of content.
• Monitor audience response through analysis and metrics, and incorporate findings in editorial and technical specs on merit.
• Have a proactive awareness of latest advances in web technology, trends, tools in the area of data and visual journalism, and effectively communicate their benefits to stakeholders.
• Deputise for senior staff, as and when required.

The successful candidate will have significant editorial experience in News and Current Affairs, including a record of multimedia storytelling innovation and leading newsroom change. You will
have a strong insight into digital journalism and the potential of new forms of digital storytelling. You will have a strong understanding of graphic design and visual journalism production, and an ability to communicate effectively with developer colleagues. Demonstrable experience of using metrics, OKRs and understanding data to define value of strategy and outcomes, as well the ability to tell stories to different audiences is important. You will also be able to demonstrate a wide knowledge of current techniques and technology for newsgathering and production.

You will also have:

• Experience of working in a leadership capacity with a multi-disciplinary team (including journalists, designers and developers) through change and deploying resources in the most effective and efficient way.
• Experience of researching, pitching, editing and commissioning online graphics and interactive features.
• A proven track record of reinventing digital storytelling and rolling out successful and repeatable new text article formats to colleagues across the newsroom
• Demonstrable experience of using audience research and data to inform and drive projects that will grow reach and/or engagement
• Excellent visual awareness skills, good data processing skills and a demonstrable interest in web technology and an understanding of the competition and industry trends