Data Journalist - Africa at BBC World Service

The BBC is an international multimedia broadcaster on radio, TV, online and social networks with a weekly global audience of 320 million. As part of an historic multi-million pound expansion of BBC Africa, the BBC World Service is introducing a wide range of new and exciting language and regional content to serve African and global audiences.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Data Journalist - Africa

Job Reference: BBC/TP/2368723/67304
Location: Nigeria
Contract Type: Fixed Term – Full Time
Job Category: Journalism
Business Unit: News - WSG World Service

Role Responsibilities

• The purpose of the visual journalism team is to unlock the potential of multimedia storytelling across all our platforms - mobile, desktop, tablet and TV.
• By using graphical tools and combining those of data and journalistic rigor, the team aims to produce powerful visual explanations that improve understanding of the news.  Key responsibilities for this role: 
• To enhance and explain major news stories. To research, write, co-ordinate, manage and deliver to tight deadlines the production of high quality added value digital content including: information graphics, maps, graphical interactives, multimedia explainers, data journalism, data visualization and other bespoke-format web content 
• To generate ideas for data-driven stories and for how they might be developed and visualised for a variety of platforms 
• To collaborate with reporters, editors, and the fellow team's designer and developer to bring those stories to publication 
• To participate and contribute to the wider Visual Journalism Community, with the Central BBC News Visual Journalism team and the other VJ Languages teams 
• To make the most of data and visual journalism tools and workflows to create content of high editorial and technical standard 
• To be aware of relevant advances in web technology and how they can enhance the team’s output 
• Support fellow African Hub journalists to make the most of the available tools, to improve commissioning and workflows. 
• To represent the Africa hub within the BBC Visual Journalism community 
• To exchange regular notes and ideas with colleagues from the West Africa Languages Visual Journalism team 

Are you the right Candidate?
The Ideal Candidate will have the following experience and knowledge: 
Data: 

• Numerate – ability to understand spreadsheets and create them in Excel and Google Drive for stories  data sharing 
• Knowledge of data sources and FOI procedure, if relevant, as it pertains to your region 
• A strong grasp of how to clean and query data 
• A good understanding of statistics and statistical analysis 

Production: 

• Be able to use basic design software (like Photoshop) to make composite images as well as create and update and create basic templates for static content for social media – whichever platforms are most relevant 
• Good visual awareness and web production experience 
• Experience of visualising data and using visualisation tools 
• Demonstrable experience of working to tight deadlines 
• Also desirable knowledge, skills and experience 
• Digital mapping skills to produce maps for digital outlets (like use of Q-GIS to create heatmaps and pointmaps for output – which can be edited by design and shared with broadcast, CartoDB) 
• Knowledge of advanced features in Excel like pivot tables 
• Knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) and of script languages such as Python and/ or R to query databases 
• Knowledge of data visualisation tools such as Tableau, Refine, Flourish (or similar) 
• Knowledge of scripting data processing languages like R 
• Experience of video production and motion graphics software (like Final Cut Pro and After Effects) to create simple explainer videos and animations 
• Experience in the production of long form digital features (like http://goo.gl/GHdurD), with tools like Shorthand or similar 
• Experience of negotiating with public officials for data and open records 
• Experience of gathering information via Freedom of Information requests.

Application Closing Date
20th April, 2023.