Political Editor

Political Editor, Times Radio (permanent contract)

Closing date:  Tuesday 9 May

Salary:  Competitive

Times Radio has shaken up the broadcasting firmament since launching in June 2020, and our recent nomination as UK Station of the Year in the Arias demonstrates the impact we have made.  As a live news radio station, we have built up a strong reputation for providing well-informed, thoughtful and intelligent news and discussion, covering the key stories of the day. We have combined the famous journalistic expertise of The Times and The Sunday Times with the radio experience of News Broadcasting to create a station that already has over 550,000 weekly listeners.  We have a world-class line-up of presenters talking to excellent guests, who value conversation over confrontation. 

Your Role:
As an ambitious Political Editor, with substantial experience of working in and around Westminster, you will create engaging, insightful and news-making speech radio.

Day to day you will: 

• Appear frequently on-air across the Times Radio schedule delivering authoritative and informed commentary and analysis in an accessible and lively way that makes sense of the latest developments from Westminster and beyond.
• Be the main liaison point for political parties and Government press offices, ensuring the UK’s most important politicians and ministers appear for interviews on Times Radio. 
• Maintain excellent relationships with MPs, SpAds and key figures in politics and be present out and about in Westminster in order to obtain comments and record interviews on the fly to enhance your on-air reporting
• Break original political stories which you also write for The Times and Sunday Times
• Conduct pre-recorded interviews with politicians for our radio output and highly popular video platforms
• Use social media regularly to update listeners with the latest lines and to share and promote our political content
• Use your extensive contacts book to support all Times Radio’s political coverage
• Work collaboratively with the Times and Sunday Times political teams to ensure our coverage is in sync and to ensure that Times Radio stories benefit their output

What we’re looking for from you: 

• An experienced and respected political journalist with years of experience reporting on politics and excellent political judgement and integrity
• Excellent on-air broadcast skills
• Ability to deliver informed, lively commentary while remaining impartial
• A wide range of political contacts and willingness to get stuck in and advocate effectively on behalf of Times Radio at the highest levels
• Large social media following so you have the ability to amplify Times Radio’s political content
• Proven track record in getting and breaking stories and ability to pitch and write them for print/online as well as deliver them for broadcast
• Willingness to learn and use technical kit so you can record and send back interviews and deliver audio and video content as needed
• Collaborative approach.  Times Radio is at its best when everyone on the station works together for our common goal.

We are News Broadcasting: Driving digital innovation, our people create award-winning national and local radio and podcasts which are must-listens for millions across the UK, Ireland and beyond. Life sounds good with Virgin Radio - home to Chris Evans at Breakfast and Graham Norton at the weekend. talkSPORT, the world’s biggest sports radio station, delivers the very best live sport and analysis and is truly powered by its millions of fans. Launched in June 2020 Times Radio brings together the peerless journalistic expertise of The Times and The Sunday Times with world-class broadcast talent including John Pienaar, Aasmah Mir and Michael Portillo. In 2022 we launched TalkTV, a major new TV channel available to everyone across the UK, delivering a schedule of news, current affairs, entertainment and sport, with Piers Morgan in a primetime evening show.

Life at News: At News UK our people are our heartbeat - they are the driving force behind our brands and we want to enable people to thrive.  Some of us work flexibly, in many different ways. We encourage you to talk to us about the flexibility you would like.  Many of us work in a hybrid way between one of the News UK & Ireland offices and remotely.  

We champion diversity and inclusion, we strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity Board, D&I  strategy & training, creating more diverse content and our intern and apprenticeship programmes.  We also have 11 employee-led networks. 

We take pride in looking after our amazing talent at News UK supporting the Health and Wellbeing of our staff. Some of what we offer includes: 

• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%;
• 25 days holiday and up to 4 volunteering days per year;
• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks;
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access.
• Private medical insurance covering pre-existing conditions
• Discounted gym memberships, ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual HIIT, yoga and run club classes
• ‘Bikes for Work’ scheme
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as physio/massage and counselling 

We want to ensure that everyone we meet has the opportunity to perform to their best when interviewing. Please let us know, at any stage, whether you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, and we will do our best to accommodate.  

News UK is an official partner of the Journalism Diversity Fund, founder of the Journalism and Disability Forum, and proud member of the Valuable 500. At News UK, we will continue to promote an inclusive and diverse workplace, to help people with visible and non visible disabilities create careers in media and aim to make our content accessible to all.