Graphics Journalist, Visual Investigations - London, United Kingdom - Financial Times

Financial Times

Verified Company

London, United Kingdom

3 weeks ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

The role

The Financial Times is looking for a graphics journalist to join its visual investigations team — a new reporting function within its award-winning visual storytelling team.

An enterprising and enthusiastic team player, you will be passionate about producing public interest journalism and keen to use your technical skills to forensically analyse major events, expose wrongdoing and break new ground with original investigations.

Comfortable working collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment, the successful applicant will be an experienced journalist with the ability to create first class visuals that go beyond those offered by online chart and mapping tools as well as bespoke web pages.

A typical week

Stay on top of the news agenda and spot topics and stories ripe for visual investigation
Work closely with designers, editors and reporters to shape these stories, and decide how data, multimedia content and text can be combined to best communicate them to readers
You will be expected to take the lead on the technical aspects of these investigations, and deliver their findings in groundbreaking visual formats — often on custom web pages

This work will be for both quick turnaround (days to weeks) and long-term (a few weeks to a number of months) projects and it will often involve collaborating with journalists from across the newsroom.

What we are looking for

Excellent communication and people skills as well as a desire to collaborate with others
Comfortable multitasking and able to work across various projects at the same time
Experience creating first class data visualisations
Numeracy and data handling skills (via programming languages such as R or Python) as well as the ability to think statistically. More advanced data handling desirable but not essential
Experience of front end web development (knowledge of React desirable but not essential)
An awareness of the latest visual storytelling techniques and an understanding of how they can be used to create exceptional visual journalism
Experience using the visual investigations 'tool kit': open source intelligence gathering and video use/verification; satellite analysis; flight and ship tracking; corporate registries and trade data etc
Motion graphics and video editing skills desirable but not essential

Key relationships

This new unit will be made up of the senior visual investigations reporter, a graphics journalist and a designer and work closely with the rest of the visual storytelling team.

The wider visual and data team and the rest of the Financial Times newsroom will also be key collaborators on projects.

About the visual storytelling team

Our projects are united by the visual elements, which help us explain complex or abstract issues in a way that goes beyond anything achievable with words alone.

Taking readers inside one town's rebuilding efforts in Ukraine, rocketing them into low-Earth orbit to see the threat space debris poses to modern life and charging them with saving the planet from the worst effects of climate change are all examples of projects produced in the past 12 months.

But a number of the visual storytelling team's most impactful projects over the past year have had the hallmarks of visually-driven investigative work and with this new unit we are excited to do more of it.

We work together to tell these stories, and our roles on projects are not solely defined by our job titles.

You will be the senior reporter, but we welcome ideas and creativity in every aspect of a project.

Benefits

Our benefits vary depending on location, but we are committed to providing best in class perks across all our offices as well as an inclusive environment to develop your career.

Examples of our benefits include; generous annual leave allowances, flexible working (including working from home), medical cover, enhanced maternity & paternity packages, subsidised gym memberships and Giving Back opportunities.

Full details of our benefits can be found here.

How we work
Our hybrid setup means staff are expected to come into the office 3 days a week.

Our office is located across the street from St. Paul's Cathedral and is easily accessible from all corners of London.

There are the main train terminals such as Liverpool Street, Moorgate, Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Waterloo all situated within walking distance or there are several tube stations within a few mins walk such as Mansion House (District or Circle line), St.

Paul's (Central line), Bank (Central or Waterloo & City line) or Barbican (Central, Hammersmith & City or Metropolitan lines).

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace
The FT is committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer who seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-econo