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Junior Journalist Apprentice

Employer
The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Council
Location
Kensington and Chelsea, London (Greater)
Salary
£20,180 per annum
Closing date
22 Oct 2020

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About Us:

The Council provides a wide range of services that support and benefit our residents. We are committed to Putting Communities First, showing Respect, Integrity and Working Together to help make every team’s work a success. We daily attract hundreds of visitors to our famous sights including our museums, Royal Albert Hall, Portobello Road and Kensington Palace.

We are passionate about delivering high quality public service to our residents including those who are most vulnerable. We aim for excellence in all our services to benefit the community we serve.

The Role:

The Junior Journalist Apprentice role is an ideal starting position for someone with a keen interest in local and national news and ambitions in media. You will be an excellent writer, with an eye for great visual content that can bring the Council’s work to life. You will spot opportunities and hunt out stories from across the Council’s services to demonstrate our work and shape the Council’s positive reputation with our external and internal audiences. This will be a fast paced role.

You will be able to jump to a task quickly, meet tight deadlines and be ready to learn new skills.

You will work towards completing the Level 3 Junior Journalist apprenticeship standard.

For more information on the role, please see the Job Description

About You:

Candidates will have achieved a pass in English and Maths at Level 1 or above, GCSEs or equivalent.

Essential skills:

  • Able to demonstrate our values and behaviours (please see below)
  • Willing to learn and master any knowledge, skills or system required for your work
  • Build and maintain positive relationships within the team and across the organisation: Demonstrate ability to influence and challenge appropriately
  • Work well with a range of internal and external people including our customers; identify and/or resolve issues for customers and appropriately signpost them to assistance
  • Able to work productively and collaboratively with others in different kinds of teams
  • Be proactive and enjoy coming up with new ideas and better ways of doing things
  • Excellent written English
  • Experience in communications
  • Creating engaging content including text, video, simple graphics, imagery, for various communications channels
  • Successfully engaging with media outlets to secure positive coverage
  • Managing negative / hostile media coverage
  • Summarising lengthy, complex documents in an accurate and accessible manner

Role Requirements:

Duties will vary from day to day. You should:

  • Be an engaging writer who can translate complex information into plain English
  • Have an understanding of what makes a successful media story and an active interest in local and national news
  • Understand the multi-media nature of the current news landscape, and the role images, video, audio and graphics play in good media output 

You will:

  • Seek out positive stories from across the Council by hunting out news in upcoming committee meetings, departmental meetings and interviewing spokespeople
  • Prepare engaging news content for the Council’s own channels including our website, intranet, e-newsletters and print newsletters for resident
  • Undertake daily media monitoring to stay across the issues of the day
  • Pitch stories to media: writing media briefings, press releases and providing supporting visual content
  • Identify opportunities for broadcast media, providing filming locations and briefing spokespeople
  • Support the Head of News and communications officers to deliver media training to spokespeople
  • Take part in the out of hours media and social media response rota
  • Take turns in producing daily communications bulletins for staff
  • Monitor and recording the impact of communications activity

We work in partnership with Hampshire County Council (HCC) who deliver many transactional services on our behalf. Although most communications will be from HCC, all selection and appointment decisions will be made by RBKC. Certain services are shared across more than one Council area to nearby neighbouring Authorities. This enhances delivery and reduces costs. Your recruitment information will advise if your remit extends beyond RBKC.

We will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

Additional information

RBKC is currently inclusively reviewing its pay, reward and benefits framework.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible. 

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