The Newsworks Academy
Welcome to the Newsworks Academy: a free, fast-paced digital learning programme focussed on the vibrant UK news publishing industry. Whether you’re taking your first steps into a media or marketing role or you’re in need of an industry update on the important role of journalism, all that news brands have to offer advertisers and the effectiveness of news brands in campaigns, this IPA CPD hours accredited course is for you.
The next Newsworks Academy starts on Monday 9 June.
Why you’ll benefit from completing
the Newsworks Academy
You’ll gain greater knowledge of the fast-changing news publishing industry, keeping you ahead of media opportunities.
You’ll power up your planning and marketing skills by increasing your expertise around news brands’
value to advertisers.
You’ll gain industry-recognised training, with IPA CPD-accredited hours helping you build a successful career.
What you’ll learn
The Newsworks Academy will help to broaden your knowledge of the news publishing industry and highlight how news brands can help advertisers achieve their objectives. It will provide a thorough foundation in the relevance and power of UK news brands, as well as the important role of journalism to society, people and advertisers.
Across seven modules, you’ll learn about news brands’ diverse content and audiences, how journalists hold power to account and stand up for the facts, plus the compelling commercial opportunities news brands offer advertisers in trusted, relevant and regulated environments. You’ll also learn about how news brands drive effectiveness for advertisers.
How you’ll learn
The Newsworks Academy is a digital learning programme presented across seven modules. The modules are served in bite-size chunks through text, animation, graphics, video and audio, making the course easy to digest on both desktop and mobile.
Each module takes around 20 minutes to complete and the course can be completed at your own pace within a four-week period.
So, what can you look forward
to on the course?
Have you ever stopped to think about what journalism is all about, the role that it plays in our lives and what makes news brands so important to us?
This introductory module shines a light on all of this and gets you thinking about how the news publishing industry has grown into an ecosystem of content across every imaginable platform.
We explore how news brands are different from other types of content, thinking about the craft of professional journalism and we explore the dynamics of the UK news publishing industry, it’s importance to advertisers and why advertising is so important in sustaining journalism into the future.
In this module we take a look at journalism’s important role in our society. What defines journalism today? What are the causes that journalists are supporting? How is journalism helping us to understand our changing culture?
If you are unsure about why journalism matters, this module will leave you in no doubt about the way that news brands work so hard to shine a light on truth, and the role they have in protecting the world we want to live in.
It’s why so many of us rely on and trust journalism, and why so many advertisers benefit from advertising in quality news brand environments.
We’ve all seen fake news on social media. Unfortunately, it’s everywhere. Falsehoods, deep fakes and sometimes just plain crazy, the trouble is it poses as real news. And, frankly, it’s a serious threat to our democracy.
In this module, we look at just how damaging fake news is to our everyday lives. We’ll learn where it’s coming from, who it affects and the real impact it’s having on advertisers.
Once you’ve gone through this eye-opening module, you’ll have a good understanding of the risks that fake news poses to our society. Importantly, you’ll see why traditional news is the perfect antidote to misinformation. It’s created by professional journalists and distributed by a news industry that prides itself on the highest standards.
Why do we read news brands? What role do they play in our lives? These are some of the important questions that will be answered in this module. You will get to see all the different audiences that news brands attract and just who is reading news content. Be prepared, there may be some surprises here.
As an industry, we use a lot of reputable sources and tools to properly understand news brand audiences, so you will get to know more about these. Finally, we will focus on a hot topic: attention. You will get to see how quality editorial drives higher levels of attention than other types of content, and why that matters for advertisers.
Digital first, data-led, with creativity at their heart. Easy to say, much harder to demonstrate. In this module, you’ll understand how news brands tick each of these boxes. You will get to see just how advertisers benefit from serious impact and engagement outcomes when partnering with news brands across all the exciting platforms they have to offer: websites, podcasts, video, radio, social, print and events to name just a few.
Plus, you will learn how publisher data is gold dust when it comes to delivering against wide-ranging brand and business objectives. You’ll see how news brands create fame and drive behaviour change, though creative thinking and execution which in turn drives growth for advertisers.
In this final module, you will look ahead at the trends shaping the news industry. These are the big global issues that present both challenges and opportunities for news brands, including topics such as AI and first party data. Importantly, you’ll see how news publishing is responding to these, leading the way with innovation that helps us to better enjoy trusted journalism and creates even greater audience engagement for advertisers.
In this module, you will get to know all about news brand effectiveness and why it’s so important to advertisers. Your particular focus will be on using news brands to drive
measurable results against crucial business metrics such as return on investment (ROI), market share, profit and sales.
You will learn how to ensure success in all these areas when advertising in news brands. You’ll also get to know how effectiveness is influenced by context in high quality media environments. Finally, you will learn how news brands maximise effectiveness across the full marketing funnel.
