News editor, road.cc
road.cc – the UK’s leading independent cycling news and reviews website is looking for a news writer to report on all things cycling-related. This is an exciting, fast-moving role in which you will split your working days between providing road.cc’s standalone news coverage and running our daily Live Blog, a busy micro-site within road.cc. The ideal candidate could be a news journalist already with a passion for cycling, or a talented writer looking for their first full-time job in news journalism, with a cycling twist.
road.cc reports on all things cycling-related, from infrastructure, to politics, to pro cycling and everything in between. You could be reporting on Highway Code changes for your first story of the day and then a short while later, be writing about one of the biggest races on the pro cycling calendar; so it’s important that you’re comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.
Your days working on our live blog will be all of the above, but in bitesize chunks and with a slightly different tone of voice. This means our ideal candidate will have a great sense of humour, and will be adept at finding blog-worthy material from social media, news feeds or search. You’ll work with the news editor and editor to shape the day’s news agenda for the site, identifying what will drive the most engagement and traffic.
Familiarity with the culture of cycling is a must for this role – that doesn’t mean you need to know who came 45th in the 2006 Tour de France, but does mean you cycle regularly either as a commuter, for sport, exercise or pleasure (or all of those and more) and are used to how cyclists interact with each other on social media and the web generally, and what interests them – a very broad range of subjects. Basically you need to have that little label inside your head that reads ‘cyclist’.
Key tasks
- Sourcing and writing material for news stories and the live blog
- Liaising with the news team, editor and tech team
- Posting your stories on our social media channels
- Engaging with the audience
- Flagging up other content from around the site on the blog
What’s on offer
- Working with a multi-award winning team on a multi-award winning website
- Competitive salary
- Plenty of opportunities for career progression
- We are based in Bath, you don’t have to be
The ideal candidate will…
- Be a cyclist (you don’t need to be a racer or epic adventurist – you just need to ride your bike regularly and love it)
- Have a sharp news sense and eye for the interesting or unusual
- Be a creative, dynamic and engaging writer
- A social media natural
- A cycling journalist already (well, we said ‘ideal’)
- Organised
- Up for it
The ideal candidate will have…
- Journalistic experience or qualification, plus media law training
- Good communication skills – you’ll need to communicate well with the rest of the team, your readers, PR and marketing people, industry insiders and more
- The ability to work under pressure
- Inner calm
Working hours
- Five days per week
- On a rota with the other news team members to cover weekend shifts
- Flexible working hours, roughly 9:00am-5:30pm
Location
road.cc’s parent company F-at Digital is based in Bath, but everyone in our news team currently works remotely. Therefore your location is unimportant for this role, if you’re local great! If you’re not, not a problem. A high degree of familiarity with cycling culture in the UK is much more important than where you are based.
Benefits
- Holiday entitlement: 20 days per annum + bank holidays.
- Sick pay scheme: 10 days paid sick leave.
- A desk and computer (if you need one) will be provided.
- Bike loan scheme
How to apply
To apply for the role, email recruitment [at] f-at.co.uk with:
- Your CV and a covering letter
- Your salary expectations
Applications for the role will close on Friday 29th October.
We're looking forward to hearing from you - best of luck to all our applicants!
