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Media, Communication & Digital Influence

Professional Journalism & News Writing

A practical professional programme focused on professional journalism & news writing, designed to strengthen communication, media capability and stakeholder engagement.

Type
Professional
Level
Intermediate
Duration
5 days
Delivery
In person, Live online, In-house
Languages
English, Arabic

Professional Journalism & News Writing develops the core editorial skills required to research, verify, structure and write accurate news content across professional media environments.

The programme examines news values, sourcing, verification, interviewing, story structure, headlines, leads, attribution, accuracy and editorial ethics.

Participants learn how to transform information into clear, balanced and publishable journalism while maintaining professional standards of verification and accountability.

Objectives

  • Understand professional news values and editorial standards.

  • Develop reliable sourcing, verification and interviewing practices.

  • Improve news structure, leads and headline writing.

  • Strengthen accuracy, attribution and balance.

  • Apply ethical judgement to routine journalistic decisions.

Learning outcomes

  • Identify and prioritise newsworthy information.

  • Verify information and assess source reliability.

  • Conduct structured journalistic interviews.

  • Write clear leads and well-organised news stories.

  • Apply attribution, balance and editorial ethics consistently.

Who it is for

  • Journalists and reporters.

  • News writers and editorial staff.

  • Media professionals entering journalism roles.

  • Communications professionals producing news-style content.

  • Professionals seeking stronger journalistic writing skills.

Programme modules

1. Journalism and News Values
  • Purpose of journalism

  • News values

  • Public interest

  • Editorial judgement

2. Sources and Verification
  • Source identification

  • Source reliability

  • Fact verification

  • Corroboration

3. Journalistic Interviewing
  • Interview preparation

  • Question design

  • Active listening

  • Follow-up questions

4. News Structure and Writing
  • News leads

  • Story structure

  • Clarity and concision

  • Context and background

5. Headlines, Attribution and Balance
  • Headline writing

  • Direct and indirect attribution

  • Balance and fairness

  • Quotations and evidence

6. Editorial Ethics and Quality Control
  • Accuracy

  • Corrections

  • Conflicts of interest

  • Pre-publication review

Methodology

The programme combines newsroom principles, reporting exercises, interview practice, verification tasks and news-writing assignments. Participants progressively develop stories from initial information through editorial review.

Assessment

Assessment includes sourcing, verification and writing exercises and a final applied assignment requiring participants to research, structure and produce a professional news story.

Certificate

Certificate of Completion

For your organisation

This programme can be delivered for a single organisation, team or institution, and adapted to your context, participants and objectives.

Organisational delivery is scoped and priced individually, and is not booked from this page.

Discuss this programme

Upcoming sessions

No dates are scheduled at present.

Training & Professional Development

Structured professional learning that develops practical, role-relevant knowledge and capability.

Discuss your challenge

Discuss your challenge