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Job Title: Senior Football Reporter (Newcastle)
Senior Football Reporter (Newcastle)
Journalism
Permanent - Full Time
Job Closing Date: 08/06/2025
THE ROLE
Package Description
Job Reference: 23532
Band: D
Salary: £46,000 - £56,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
Contract type: Permanent
Location: Office Base is Newcastle
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.
If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process please contact the reasonable.adjustments@bbc.co.uk For any general queries, please contact: bbchr@bbc.co.uk.
Job Introduction
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.
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.
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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.
DISCLAIMER
This job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.
BBC Group and Public Services, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, United Kingdom, W1A 1AA. BBC Studios Distribution Limited, company no: 01420028, registered address: 1 Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, London, United Kingdom W12 7FA.
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