Journalist

Africa’s media landscape is changing. It is one of the fastest developing news markets in the world with mobile technology transforming lives, internet connectivity increasing, the radio market remaining relatively strong and Television migrating from analogue to digital.

The BBC World Service remains the leading international broadcaster in Africa, reaching a weekly audience of more than 100 million across all platforms and Social Media.

One of the Horn of Africa language services, BBC Afaan Oromoo aims to deliver our journalism in a lively and engaging fashion, with a focus on digital output and the promotion of content on social media and social newsgathering form a large part of its activities across all platforms.

We’re looking for a journalist who is passionate about digital storytelling. As the digital landscape is changing you will need to be nimble with technology. You’ll be leading the digital first strategy implementation effort and you need to be able to produce content that works for digital platforms apart from playing leadership role in the team.

You will work with other Journalists to create contents for a variety of video, audio broadcast and digital media platforms, and information technology to research, write and deliver outputs in the appropriate medium in Afaan Oromo, to the highest professional standards in multiple formats including text, audio and video. You will interview, write, proofread and sometimes maybe required to present content on radio or online. This might be live or recorded. In addition you will:

• Be required to interview and edit audio, produce radio programmes and other digital content for BBC Afaan Oromo Service’s digital output that can be published on the website, in social media, radio and on any other platforms.
• Use knowledge of the digital media market to produce interesting news content and analysis for our website and social media platforms.
• Organize, gather, process and deliver multimedia output, primarily digital in text, audio, or video-format and responding promptly to news and other relevant requirements.
• Work across all BBC Afaan Oromo platforms to ensure the highest quality content is created for our audiences and conforms to BBC Values and editorial standards.
• Exercise editorial judgment in developing story ideas and producing accurate and impartial journalism.

Are you the right candidate?

You will be a fluent/native speaker of Oromo and professional working proficiency in English. Knowledge of other Ethiopian languages will be an added advantage. You will also need to have:

• Excellent knowledge of Ethiopia and Eritrea’s current affairs, Horn of Africa and interest in international affairs.
• An in-depth understanding of history, politics, social issues and culture of Ethiopia and Eritrea communities in east Africa and the Diaspora.
• Skills in interviewing, shooting photos and/or video, and of gathering journalistic material through other creative means.
• A thorough understanding of the latest developments in digital storytelling.
• Significant recent experience as a journalist, with a good knowledge of production techniques

Job Title: Journalist BBC News Afaan Oromo

Reference: 21422

Contract: Permanent/continuing

Band: C

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Job board closes: midnight on the 17th February (GMT)

About the BBC

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.

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.