Senior Football Reporter (Newcastle)

We are looking for an excellent Newcastle reporter to help improve our coverage.

The role focuses on driving the daily news agenda around Newcastle Football Club coverage across the whole of BBC Sport, leading on the editorial agenda, chasing stories, being an expert voice and building relationships and contacts.

We would want you to be ahead of the breaking stories and able to deliver analysis that tells our audience the how and why so they can understand what it all means. You’ll also be expected to tell uncover and tell great stories that are away from the news/on-field agenda to bring your club’s coverage to life.

You would be part of BBC Sport’s Stories team which serves online, social, TV and radio.

Growing the audience for your club on the BBC Sport website and app is key. But we want you to tell the biggest stories on TV, radio and understand what can translate to have an impact on social media.

The ideal candidate would be an experienced, driven journalist with a track record of producing properly sourced, quality journalism, breaking football news stories, securing big interviews, reporting transfer deals, and writing about ongoing themes & talking points.

You’ll need to be a strong communicator to help bring different parts of the BBC together around key content and stories, and work as part of a team with other reporters.

The candidate will need good contacts in Newcastle. If you don’t have these you’ll need to demonstrate a track record that shows you can build these up quickly in a extremely competitive media landscape.

Main Responsibilities

Responsibilities would include some of the following:

• Cover the key football stories in your club, often on the BBC Sport website and app, while sharing information to be used across other platforms and sometimes appearing on air.
• Demonstrate leadership and ownership of a Premier League clubs’ day-to-day news agenda, delivering a consistent volume of news and analysis, becoming an expert voice on your club.
• Maintain and develop a network of contacts for your club so you can not only break the news, but explain why and how stories and events are happening.
• Prioritise written content for the BBC Sport website and app to grow the audience to your club, be that news stories, features or analysis pieces.
• Use developments in social media to deliver our journalism to new audiences.
• Alert editors to breaking news. Breaking quick, accurate, news stories under pressure and to a high editorial standard, demonstrating robust, well-sourced journalism, and fully observing the BBC editorial guidelines. Check and advise against coverage when necessary.
• Maintain regular and clear communication with planners, commissioners and editors, supplying items for the sports news diary, coming up with a stream of realistic coverage ideas and working jointly with editors on helping plan coverage
• Provide regular advice on football news developments, guidance on agency or newspaper stories and any off-record briefings from clubs or authorities
• Regularly attending press conferences, media events, interview opportunities and some live games to gather material for output, produce digital content and build relationships
• Contributing to the daily football live texts with regular updates and expert analysis
• Writing on the whistle match reports, live text entries, post-match follow-up articles, and in-depth, insightful feature articles
• Gathering material and producing video and audio content for social media, website and linear platforms
• Working collaboratively with BBC colleagues in radio, TV, gathering and regional teams to source and produce women’s football news stories
• Being receptive to feedback and good at building positive working relationships with peers
• This is not a shift-based role. This role is on a variable shift pattern which means it responds to unpredictable output or editorial needs – driven by stories and breaking news. This role will involve unpredictable, regular evening and weekend work.

Are you the right candidate?

• Motivated by a strong desire to cover your club for audiences in a competitive media sector, telling them what is going on, provide analysis and tell fantastic stories.
• Experience of covering Newcastle or relevant Premier club, and delivering strong stories and analysis.
• Ability to grow, maintain and develop contacts in football.
• Strong writing ability to produce fast, accurate copy and well-written long-form pieces.
• Ability to work as part of a team, and collaborate with other reporters and production staff.