News Writing: The art of storytelling

.Take this course on Desktop or Mobile. For the best mobile experience, download the EdCast app for free on iOS and Android and use team name: thomsonfoundation.edcast.com.​

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Course overview

This course is designed to teach you how to write news stories in an effective and engaging way using techniques employed by Ewen MacAskill and other journalists around the world. Ewen will teach you when and how to go beyond the inverted pyramid model of storytelling to make your stories stand out and to make you a better story-teller.

This is a first of a three-course series on news writing. In courses 2 and 3, Ewen will 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.

Meet your Instructors

Ewen MacAskill,

An award winning journalist, Ewen has worked with news organisations around the world for almost 50 years mostly as a reporter. He spent 22 years at The Guardian, writing about just about anything but mainly politics and foreign affairs. He was the paper’s Washington bureau chief. He has won various awards, including a Pulitzer and an Emmy. 

Joining Ewen is a team of experts contributing thoughts, advice and insights:

TOP L TO R

• CHRISTINE MUNGAI is a Nairobi-based journalist at the Baraza Media Lab, a media collaboration initiative. She has featured on CNN and Al Jazeera as well as the Boston Globe and other publications.

  ALAN RUSBRIDGER is the former editor of The Guardian, author of two books on journalism and member of Facebook’s oversight board.

  EMMANUEL DOGBEVI is an Accra-based investigative journalist, founder of NewsBridge Africa and of Ghana Business News. 

  TABU BUTAGIRA is a Kampala-based editor on the Daily Monitor.

  JANINE GIBSON is a London-based assistant editor digital at the Financial Times, former editor of Buzzfeed UK and former deputy editor of The Guardian.

  BERNA NAMATA is a Kigali-based editor at the East African and Africa specialist at Thomson Foundation.

  PAUL JOHNSON is a London-based former deputy editor of The Guardian.

Course Outline

• Section 1 provides an overview of the course and introduces the course trainer and media experts.
•  Section 2 introduces  basic ways of writing a news story and how to polish your story-telling skills.
• Section 4 brings the audience into focus and looks at how to capture attention through your opening paragraph.
•  Section 5 looks at the use of conversational short sentences for effective storytelling.
•  Section 6 illustrates the benefits and techniques of “humanising” a story.
•  Section 7 explores more  techniques to improve storytelling  including “drop intros”, variations on the Inverted Pyramid, field reporting and the use of context  

In each section, you will be presented with a practical exercise based on the concepts discussed in the course.

You should be able to complete this course within 2 hours.