Package Description
Job Reference: 19986/EX2324
Band: B
Salary: £28,000-£32,000 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 based - London Broadcasting House, W1A
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 and gym. You can find out more about working at the BBC by selecting this link to our .
This role is advertised as part of our for disabled people. To apply for this role you should identify as deaf, disabled or neurodivergent and must meet either:, or the definition of disability in the if applying in Northern Ireland. You’re broadly defined as disabled under both acts if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative or adverse effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. This definition includes both apparent and non-apparent conditions and impairments, and medical conditions such as Cancer, HIV or Multiple Sclerosis.
We are committed to making the process of applying for this role as accessible as possible. If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the application process, or have any questions about our Extend programme, please contact the. The BBC are fully committed to providing workplace adjustments to help eliminate barriers in the workface that disabled people face. To do this, we have our own dedicated BBC Access and Disability Service that provides assessments and support throughout employment with us. If you are successful in applying for this role and require workplace adjustments, we will work with you to get your adjustments in place.
If you’d like more information on BBC Extend, please visit the
Job Introduction
We’re recruiting a Journalism Researcher to work on Newsnight. The programme has recently been refreshed and we’ve seen a significant rise in our audience figures. We’re looking for someone who shows initiative, has lots of ideas for guests, and enjoys working to tight deadlines. You need to be someone with the potential to be an excellent guest booker and the ability to write forensic briefs. A knowledge and experience of assisting on social media content would be useful in this role. Being a great team player is important in this role.
Newsnight is about added-value conversation, consequential interviews and gripping debate and discussion. We’re looking for sharp and smart journalists with creative ideas, strong analytical skills. A good knowledge of news and current affairs is crucial.
We’re the BBC’s big news personality show and our interviews are picked up by the rest of the BBC and broadcast around the world. Our past interviewees include the infamous interview with Prince Andrew. Other guests include Elon Musk, Hillary Clinton, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, Prime Minister Trudeau, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Dalai Lama and David Attenborough. The role involves shift work with some late evenings.
Main Responsibilities
1. Identify and secure suitable guests and contributors, delivering to tight deadlines while maintaining high editorial standards.
2. Research and compile source data into briefs.
3. Generate ideas and stories – contribute to the creative treatment of an item or programme and suggest treatments and proposals.
4. Carry out in-depth background and subject research, ensuring complete accuracy and critically evaluating the relevance and suitability of information.
5. You may be asked to work collaboratively with other parts of the BBC to give our original stories the best possible exposure on the appropriate platforms and create impact.
6. You may be asked to assist our social media producer.
Are you the right candidate?
7. Good knowledge of news and current affairs.
8. Demonstrates the ability and passion to bring creative ideas to the table for output.
9. Can effectively research complex subjects and provide original insights into stories.
10. Finds difficult-to-reach contributors, pre-interviewing them and writing clear briefs, with the ability to show evidence of creative thinking when tracking down people.
11. Carries out thorough, accurate, reliable research with an eye for detail.
12. Achieves impact for our journalism.
13. Proven commitment to diversity in all its forms both on and off air.
14. Effective planning and organising skills with the ability to work across several tasks at one time, delivering consistently to deadlines – you will need to work on long-term planning as well as setting up guests at short notice.
15. A knowledge and experience of assisting on social media content would be very useful in this role.
For further information please contact, Senior Talent Acquisition Advisor.
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 .
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.