Reuters seeks breaking news reporters in Russia

Reuters is seeking two top journalists to join its Russia & CIS bureau as breaking news specialists, dedicated to speed and excellence in everything they do, whether it be winning news alerts and writing swift updates or crafting a quick sidebar story and spotting a viral moment.

Successful applicants will join our wider breaking news team in Moscow and help colleagues across the former Soviet Union, including in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, to break news.

Even when things are “quiet” the flow of news is heavy, the territory covered vast, unpredictable and market-moving, and the geopolitical significance of the story often major.

The role involves supporting the wider bureau by monitoring live online events, TV broadcasts and social media feeds, sending headlines and building coverage in the first crucial minutes of a breaking news story. The job involves shift work but also an opportunity to spend time working on mid-term to long-term stories.

Russia and the CIS region is one of the most important bureaus worldwide for breaking news, so the successful candidate must be at home covering a variety of stories at speed for all our major client groups, from an unexpected geopolitical announcement by President Vladimir Putin, to a surprise interest rate hike, to a coup d’etat in Central Asia.

The reporters will work under the direction of the Russia & CIS Bureau Chief and Russia & CIS Breaking News Editor and also coordinate closely with the visuals team on breaking news.

About the Role

As a Breaking News Reporter at Reuters, you will:

Spot the news first and deliver it to our clients first
Maintain the bureau’s excellent timings record
Alert news clearly and accurately, and write quick updates, all in line with the in-house breaking news drill
Craft engaging headlines and clear, contextualised updates, consistent with Reuters standards.

About You

To be a Breaking News Reporter at Reuters, you will likely have:

A passion for speed and accuracy
Excellent news judgment across the file
Very strong writing skills
Native-level English and excellent Russian
Good communication skills and ability to work well in a tight-knit team
Experience handling major breaking news stories and directly injecting copy
An ability to work calmly under pressure

Please note, the deadline for applications is Tuesday 30th November 2021.

To apply, go here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.