Reach announces hiring plans

Reach announced it is hiring upwards of 60 new roles into its editorial teams this autumn, including a newly created “General Assignments” team which has been designed to be deployed flexibly around the newsbrands.

Reach says the roles will include audience writers and editors who join brand teams, including the Mirror, Express, Manchester Evening News, Daily Record, BirminghamLive and ChronicleLive, as well as several new social video journalists which are being placed directly into newsrooms including at the Mirror, Express, Daily Star, Daily Record, Liverpool Echo and Wales Online. The publisher says they will be tasked with turning the day’s biggest stories into social video, as well as helping to shape the news agenda daily with newsroom leaders.

Reach’s central Content Hub and Distribution Hub, launched earlier this year, are both expanding their teams. The Content Hub, having integrated its team of journalists to provide mainstream popular content to all of Reach’s portfolio, will add more production journalists to the team with a focus on topics including money, health and travel. The Distribution Hub will also expand, focusing on increasing visibility of Reach’s content and, in particular, bolstering Reach’s “secure audiences”, such as through WhatsApp and newsletters, added the publisher.

In addition, Reach says the Content Hub will see the creation of a new team of nearly 20 General Assignment journalists. These will support Reach editors across the portfolio in covering breaking stories, or trending topics that would benefit from a temporary boost in resources.

Chief Digital Publisher, David Higgerson, said: “The new roles we have created reflect our determination to serve audiences where they are, and be experts in the topics which they tell us matters to them most.

“When we launched our Content Hub earlier this year, it represented a new way of working for us and the results so far have been very encouraging. As we hoped, the team has been able to use data to focus on topics we know readers love - for example like TV/film, which often works well across the portfolio, or like gardening and DIY, which we know are particularly popular for a handful of brands.

“This early success has prompted us to continue to think more creatively about how central teams can nimbly support our brand teams, which is how the General Assignments team came to be. With a strong mix of brands and more journalists than any other commercial publisher in the country, it's empowering to see that we can be greater than the sum of our parts."

Reach says vacancies for most of the roles have opened this week, and most new hires expected to be in role from January.