|            BY THOMSON FOUNDATION

News Writing: The art of storytelling

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This course is designed to teach you how to write news stories in an effective and engaging way using techniques employed by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ewen MacAskill and other journalists around the world.

Course Contents

About
Outcomes
Course Experts
Welcome to News Writing: The art of storytelling

Ewen will teach you how you can make your stories stand out and become a better storyteller.
This is the first course in a series on news writing. In two further courses, Ewen will build on what you learn here and take you through more advanced techniques and the art of news analysis.
At the end of this course you will be able to:

  • Tell a story using the Inverted Pyramid style
  • Write a news story in simple, clear language
  • Use a drop intro
  • Humanise a story
  • Provide context to a story
  • Appreciate the value and importance of going to the scene

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.

Christine Mungai –
Baraza Media Lab

Christine is the curator of the Baraza Media Lab, a Kenyan-based network which supports collaborative storytelling ideas, networking and experimenting among the country’s media practitioners. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Christine’s work has featured in major news outlets including CNN and Al Jazerra.

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.

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.

Tabu Butagira –
Media executive

Tabu is the associate editor of the Daily Monitor in Kampala and the former managing editor for the Nation Media Group in Uganda. He specialises in politics, security, diplomacy and investigations.

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.