Senior Digital Journalist

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Senior Digital Journalist

Location: Abuja

Description

• Working closely with the Radar & Echo Editor, the Senior Digital Journalist will coordinate breaking news coverage, manage homepage priorities, optimize content for digital audiences, and ensure consistent editorial standards across our websites and social media platforms.
• We are looking for an experienced and highly motivated Senior Digital Journalist to play a leading role in our digital newsroom.
• The successful candidate will oversee day-to-day online publishing across the Media Trust Group’s digital platforms, supervise social media publishing, and help drive a digital-first editorial strategy that delivers timely, engaging, and impactful journalism.
• This is a leadership role for an experienced digital journalist who combines excellent editorial judgment with a deep understanding of audience engagement, SEO, analytics, and newsroom workflows.

Key Responsibilities
Editorial Leadership:

• Support the planning and execution of the Group’s digital editorial strategy.
• Ensure accuracy, fairness, balance and compliance with editorial standards.
• Make timely editorial decisions in a fast-paced news environment.
• Commission, edit and publish breaking news, live coverage and enterprise stories.
• Coordinate day-to-day digital news operations across the newsroom.

Website Publishing:

• Supervise publishing across the Group’s websites.
• Maintain high editorial standards across all digital platforms.
• Ensure content is published quickly, accurately, and optimized for digital audiences.
• Manage homepage presentation and ensure stories are prominently displayed according to editorial priorities.

Social Media Management:

• Develop publishing plans that maximize audience reach and engagement.
• Work with journalists to create platform-specific content for Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
• Oversee editorial publishing across all official social media accounts.
• Ensure breaking news is distributed effectively across platforms.

Audience Growth:

• Identify emerging audience trends and opportunities for growth.
• Monitor content performance and recommend strategies to increase traffic, engagement, and loyalty.
• Apply SEO best practices to improve discoverability.
• Use audience insights and analytics to guide editorial decisions.

Newsroom Coordination:

• Contribute to editorial planning meetings and breaking news coverage.
• Coordinate with editors and journalists across print, television, radio and digital teams.
• Supervise and mentor digital journalists and producers.
• Help ensure efficient newsroom workflows and adherence to publishing deadlines.

Innovation:

• Explore new content formats that enhance audience engagement.
• Promote innovative digital storytelling formats.
• Support the use of AI-enabled newsroom tools and emerging technologies.

Qualifications and Experience

• Demonstrable experience supervising editorial workflows or leading newsroom teams.
• Strong understanding of digital-first journalism and audience-focused storytelling.
• Proven experience managing online publishing in a fast-paced newsroom.
• Minimum of 7 years’ experience in digital journalism, online news editing or newsroom leadership.
• Degree in Journalism, Mass Communication, Communication Studies, or a related discipline.

Skills and Competencies:

• High standards of accuracy, ethics and editorial integrity.
• Exceptional editing and headline writing skills.
• Knowledge of Google Analytics, Chartbeat or similar audience analytics tools.
• Excellent planning, organisational and leadership skills.
• Strong understanding of social media publishing and audience engagement.
• Excellent news judgement.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines.
• Experience with content management systems (CMS).
• Strong understanding of SEO and audience development.

Desirable:

• Experience working in a converged newsroom.
• Familiarity with AI tools for editorial productivity.
• Experience with live blogging and real-time news coverage.
• Experience developing digital audience growth strategies.
• Knowledge of multimedia storytelling.