Swindon Town Football Reporter
The award-winning Swindon Advertiser is looking for a top-class sports journalist to cover Swindon Town Football Club.
The Advertiser is proud of its coverage of the town’s League Two club and we are looking for the next person to take the helm of this important role, and bring it to the next level.
We are looking for a digital reporter who can deliver up-to-the-second live blogs, match reports, exclusive interviews, analysis and much more.
The right person for this role will not be satisfied with just turning around press releases and covering games, but by finding those underreported stories, and new angles and giving their unique insight into what is taking place.
As well as growing the audience reading about the club, you will spearhead efforts to bring fans in as digital subscribers with special paid-for content including unique insights and exclusives.
Reporting to the editor, you will join a buzzing newsroom based in Swindon and will be responsible for setting your own agenda and content plan each and every week.
Audience analytics will be a big part of the role, to ensure you know what to write next and how to maximise the potential audience for your stories, as well as identify trends.
Multi-media, social media and SEO will all be tools you are proficient in, to not only source and deliver stories but also to interact with our readers on a regular basis.
As well as Swindon Town, the successful applicant will be keeping an eye on other highlights within Wiltshire sports, including lower-league football.
It is a digital-first role, but your coverage will also feature in the Advertiser’s newspaper as well as sister titles Wiltshire and the Gazette and Herald.
The nature of the role means you will have a varied shift pattern covering Town games home and away across the country, which will include evenings and weekends, with time off in the week.
While office-based, the role is also hybrid with an option to work from home on selected days.
In return, the successful applicant can enjoy a competitive salary and a range of company benefits (see below). But you will also become the figurehead fans look to for everything Swindon Town, giving the right journalist the perfect platform to hone their skills as well as raise their own profile.
Key responsibilities:
Covering matches as well as developments off the pitch for Swindon Town Football Club
Being first to report breaking sports news from your patch to keep readers bang up-to-date
Thinking creatively to come up with new story ideas and ways to deliver them to our audience that suit our digital platforms
Building our digital audience and social media following to bring our content to even more people in the community
Spotting national/regional content that could resonate in your patch and making it relevant and interesting to our readers
Fully utilise analytics to identify what our readers like and what they want next from our coverage
Building contacts in and around the club as well as managing relations with stakeholders
Driving digital subscriptions by writing high-quality, accurate digital sports stories, live blogs and features to deadlines
Using a range of digital tools and platforms to tell stories, including video, audio, infographics and maps
Using social media to build contacts and sniff out the best stories from your clubs and fan communities