SSA Markets/EuroWeek Reporter (London)
Euroweek are looking for a reporter for the web-based service www.ssamarkets.com and for the newspaper, EuroWeek, covering niche currency and sovereign, supranational and agency bond markets . You will find and write daily news stories and features and help build and maintain the SSA website’s data offering.
Main duties and objectives
• Providing daily news coverage of SSA and niche currency bond markets for the service and EuroWeek. The reporter will cover borrowers, dealers, brokers and investors in the market.
• Working with the data manager on www.sssamarkets.com to compile and maintain the various data aspects of the site to the utmost accuracy.
• The successful candidate will have various reporting lines, principally to the editor of www.ssamarkets.com and the editor and managing editor of EuroWeek.
Core competencies
• News writing skills: The reporter will be expected to produce a number of stories every day so needs to demonstrate news judgement and news writing ability. The ability to spot newsworthy information from a variety of sources quickly is very important as is the confidence to investigate its potential for a story. The reporter will then need to write high quality news stories accurately and quickly. The reporter will also be expected to generate ideas for stories and features from market knowledge, contacts and data among other sources.
• Research skills: The reporter will need to be resourceful in finding information and place the great importance on accuracy. The success of the www.ssamarkets.com will rely on an unimpeachable reputation for accuracy and comprehensive data and news coverage. This applies to both market data and stories. The reporter will often be required to find alternative ways of getting the required information for data or stories when the first and most obvious route proves closed. The reporter will need to aim to become an authority on SSA bond markets and needs to show curiosity and perseverance.
• Networking: To help the web service become a hub for SSA bond markets the reporter will need to develop good relationships within the firm and within the market and will need to maintain EuroWeek’s reputation in the niche currency bond market. The reporter will need to gain the trust of senior bankers, traders and government officials among others to generate off-diary news and gain the most market colour possible.
• Planning and organising: The reporter will have to source a large amount of data from disparate sources for news reporting and data gathering. The reporter will need to be able to manage their own time and be able to break a large task into manageable sections which they will have to prioritise to deliver results to strict deadlines. SSA bond markets are unpredictable and diverse and the reporter will need to be able to make contingency plans if initial plans are not practicable. Some degree of technical competency with large amounts of data and Excel is required and familiarity with data products is desirable.
• Flexibility: By their nature, the bond markets are uncertain and volatile places. The reporter will need to be responsive to the changing needs of the news service throughout the day and open to working with new methods and changing objectives as the service refines its working patterns throughout its development. The reporter may also be required to travel at short notice and work long hours on occasion as required.
• Teamwork: The reporter will work within a team on the SSA Project and in the wider context of the EuroWeek group. Although the reporter will carry out a lot of reporting and data work under their own initiative, they will need to work professionally with other team members in managing the workload so that the service can achieve its goals. In the initial phase, the job will require the reporter’s investigative talents to be deployed more in data research than regular news writing and the reporter is expected to contribute to this effort fully.
• Numeracy/Bond market knowledge: The reporter will need to be comfortable handling basic statistical information and data. Deciding how best to present data and manipulating it to reveal angles for news stories is important.
The reporter will be dealing constantly with people with a great deal of experience in bond markets.
The reporter must either be comfortable with concepts such as bond prices, yields and spreads or at least demonstrate the potential and confidence to get to grips with such ideas. Similarly, the reporter will need a basic understanding of what capital markets are and the difference between the basic types of securities traded in them (shares or equities, bonds and loans) as a starting point. The drive and curiosity to keep learning about bond markets will be critical to the reporter’s success and that of the news service.