|            BY THOMSON FOUNDATION

News Analysis: The art of storytelling

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Audiences are demanding more from journalists. Not only do they want you to tell them what is happening in the world, they also want you to be able to explain it to them. This is where you’ll learn the art of news analysis with the expert help of our Pulitzer prize and Emmy award-winning course instructor, Ewen MacAskill.  This course is the third in our news writing series.

Course Contents

About
Outcomes
Course Experts
This course is designed to teach you the importance of news analysis stories, as well as the differences between a basic news story, a news analysis and an opinion/comment piece. To help you through it there are tips and insights from leading journalists. News Analysis: The art of storytelling is the third instalment in our series to help you improve your news writing skills.
If you have not already completed the first two courses in the series, we strongly recommend you do so prior to completing this course. 

First course: News writing: The art of storytelling
Second course: Advanced Writing: The art of storytelling

By the end of this course you will:

  • Recognise the distinction between news, news analysis and opinion/comment
  • Know how to write news analysis
  • Appreciate how and why you should label stories
  • Know the importance of honesty and transparency

Ewen MacAskill –
Course instructor

Emmy-award winner Ewen is a former diplomatic editor, Washington bureau chief and defence and intelligence correspondent at The Guardian. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the disclosures from Edward Snowden about the activities of the American National Security Agency.

Berna Namata – Journalist and African specialist

Berna is the former east Africa programme manager for Thomson. Previously, she worked as a bureau chief in Rwanda for the Nation Media Group’s regional weekly newspaper, The East African. Berna is now programmes and partnerships manager at AMREF Health Africa UK.

Alan Rusbridger –
Editorial leader

Alan was the editor-in-chief of The Guardian for 10 years. He is chairman of the steering committee for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and was one of the first members of Facebook’s oversight board. He is currently the editor of Prospect, a monthly magazine, specialising in politics, economics, and current affairs.

Emmanuel Dogbevi –
Ghana Business News

Emmanuel is the managing editor of Ghana Business News. He’s an investigative journalist who was the first Ghanaian to be awarded a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Janine Gibson –
Financial Times

Janine is the editor of the Weekend Financial Times in the UK. She’s the former editor-in-chief of The Guardian US and spent time as the editor of the Buzzfeed UK website.

Paul Johnson -
Journalist 

Paul Johnson was the deputy editor of The Guardian from 1995 to 2020. In his 40-year Guardian career he worked as the Midlands correspondent, Ireland correspondent and news editor.